Above: Hopefully, new routes will eliminate last year’s issues, where some young students regularly rode on buses for over an hour before starting their school day. (photo by Joao Melo)
The Southborough public schools are working on another plan to revamp school bus routes. This time the focus is on shortening the ride times for elementary school students.
The plan partly depends on better communication from parents about their family’s needs and issues. That includes asking families that haven’t already completed the transportation survey to submit their answers by this Friday (an extended deadline).
The administration needs to know who will and won’t be using the buses in mornings and/or afternoons. They also want parents to let them know about any specific hardships they have.
In a School Committee meeting on Monday morning, Superintendent Gregory Martineau acknowledged that last year’s transportation “was not acceptable”. Kids “traveled far too long for where they need to go”.
School Committee Chair Chelsea Malinowski said that she looked into the data for last year’s Kindergarten class. She had gotten through the info on 81 students so far and found that 35 had rides over 45 minutes long in the morning. Some were on for an hour or longer. On the flip side, Neary students (4th and 5th graders) had similar commutes in the afternoon.
In the update, Martineau said that they discovered that their communication system hadn’t sent the transportation survey messages to families with students who will be entering Kindergarten this year. He expected the message with the extended deadline to go out yesterday or by this morning.
Previously, the routes automatically included stops for every K-8 student, even if parents drove them to and from school every day. This year, they won’t include families who don’t intend to use the bus. The Superintendent noted that if families’ plans change, they can call the district. They will update the routes to add the students.
According to Martineau, the other big change is splitting the buses to have some pick up Finn students and others fetch Woodward and Neary students.
The Superintendent noted that some families with multiple kids in the K-5 schools will now have more than one bus stop. He followed that impacted families will be encouraged to reach out. He said they will be able to present some ideas for how to deal with the issue.
Malinowski referred to families who need to get their kids off to school before they head to work in the morning. She said that families will need to communicate if they are having hardships with changing bus times.
Her comments referred to the challenge of needing feedback from families in order to create the most efficient routes — while families don’t yet know the impact from routes which have yet to be posted.
Parents will receive information on the new routes sometime in August. Martineau indicated that Assistant Superintendent Kieth Lavoie will make a presentation on Transportation changes at the committee’s August 5th meeting.
It’s hardly the first time the administration has struggled with mapping improved routes for students. It’s an issue that has been causing headaches for the regional school system for years.
