Families of South Orange-Maplewood public school students are expressing frustration about late buses and missed stops as school began again this week.
The complaints are turning into an annual refrain, with transportation snafus plaguing the return to school, especially for Clinton Elementary School, for several years running.
As one parent wrote the District and Board of Education (and copied Village Green), “I’m sure you’ve been getting emails about the issues we are facing regarding bus routes. I’ve been through this for 4 years now and it feels as though the district continues to make the same mistakes over and over again without learning from the past.”
The parent, who has one child busing to Clinton School and another busing to Delia Bolden School, noted that “stops were missed yesterday,” and that the Clinton 164 bus returned her child to their stop at 4 p.m. “School gets out at 2:38 p.m. – that’s over 1.5 hours on a bus. My friend’s children were crying and saying they would never take the bus again.”
Another parent wrote on a local Facebook group, “I refuse to normalize this level of incompetence by adults when it lets kids ride on buses for hours and come home close to 6 p.m. on the first day of school. Last year my child at Seth Boyden was late to school literally every day until the week before Thanksgiving. I’ll be damned if that happens again this year.”
Another parent on the same thread said their child returned to the bus stop at 5:36 p.m. “I know it’s the beginning of the year but last year they fixed a few kinks on our route and ended up splitting us into 2 buses, I don’t know why they didn’t just go straight into that plan for this year. We love our bus driver and matron, same as last year, but I guess they have a ton of kids to drop off after the first school gets out before getting to ours.”
A group of 28 Clinton parents sent one email detailing that — besides the late return — many students “were never picked up in the morning, leaving parents to scramble to organize carpools”, families “had no way to reach the transportation office, and schools had no information once buses left”; routes were “logistically unworkable, with buses overlapping neighborhoods and failing to account for traffic”; and children were “being asked to walk through hazardous intersections to reach stops.”
The parents wrote, “The inequity was stark: families who could drive their children experienced a joyful first-day drop-off, while bus riders endured stress, fear, and in some cases trauma that may keep them from riding again.”
Supt. Jason Bing and Clinton Principal Melissa Butler have been in touch with parents.
“We understand the frustration-we feel the same and apologize for the issues-we had a discussion with the vendor last night about resolving the issue immediately,” wrote Bing to one Clinton parent.
To another, Bing wrote, “We are on it. Changes were made but will need to be reevaluated as we work through week one. We met with BelAir [the District’s transportation vendor] yesterday. A few of the issues were beyond our control-traffic/road closures and vehicle congestion at pick up time. However, schools have been contacted and drivers have been give alternate routes. We have a new Director of Transportation who started last month, she has extensive routing experience that will allow us to bring that task in-house a lot more instead of a third party vendor.” Bing concluded, “Appreciate you reaching out.”
Bing did push back on the idea that bus drivers had not run routes multiple times before the start of school, saying that he had rode along on several of the “dry runs.”
“They do dry runs the week before school starts,” wrote Bing, adding: “I did a couple of the dry runs with the buses so I know those took place. After speaking with BelAir yesterday, we understood the driver [in question] was new. BelAir reached out to ensure he had the correct routes for today.” Bing asked the parent, “Please keep us in loop.”
The school district has struggled with transportation at the start of the school year for several years.
The district fully outsourced its busing — which had been 80% outsourced already — in 2022.
Some community members have tied the troubles to the District’s Intentional Integration Initiative, the District’s generational effort to integrate elementary and middle schools which is entering its fifth year and has been largely successful at creating socioeconomic and racial parity across schools.
An initial effort to end “courtesy busing” to support the III generated backlash when parents were notified about the loss of their routes weeks before the start of the 2022-23 school year. Other parents sought — and gained — legal relief when they lost busing for hazardous routes. The Board of School Estimate increased the district’s annual budget tax levy cap in 2023 to support the reintroduction of courtesy and hazardous routes and the III. At that time, Board of Ed 2nd Vice President [now President] Nubia DuVall Wilson said, “It’s a gold standard. If you’re going to do integration, you do transportation.”
A number of parents who emailed to detail difficulties with busing pickups and drop-offs cited the III, and said they supported its continuation.
In their email today, the 28 Clinton bus parents wrote, “We support the goals of the III plan, but the transportation system is not keeping up. This is harming the very students it was designed to support.”
