![]() Steele said that had been the case for years, though district representatives were quick to point out that there had never been a shortage of this magnitude. ![]() Even then there was already a shortage of bus drivers in the district. Even if the bus system wasn’t reliable, the driver was.īut that was last school year. “She helped me, she my kids over here,” Kaidi said. And even though it wasn’t her fault that the bus was late, Steele made sure the kids arrived home safely. Steele knew where the kids on her route lived. It was Roberta Steele, who had driven the school bus in Kaidi’s neighborhood for years, there to bring the two children home. Cold and worried, she eventually carried her younger children back home to get her phone and try to find out what was going on - and that was when she got a knock on the door. Northport Elementary in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, had only recently reopened for in-person classes, and day after day, Kaidi’s family had been struggling with late school bus drop-offs. She stood on the corner near her house, but the bus was nowhere to be seen and there was no word why it was so late. One day last spring, Naima Kaidi waited nearly an hour for her kindergartener and first-grader to get home from school. Gunther said he remains skeptical that Zum purchasing 250 new buses will fix a driver shortage that has persisted for years, especially as drivers are pulled from existing contractors still serving the school system.This article is a collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and The Fuller Project, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on issues that affect women. “The mediation is still ongoing and therefore, the school system is unable to comment,” Bassett said in an email Wednesday.Ĭontractors say they are still in the dark as to how existing contracts will be combined with the 288 routes awarded to Tip Top and Zum for the new school year. 17 but contractors say they haven’t heard an offer from the school system’s mediation team since March. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice - meaning it can still be refiled - on Jan. While the school board rescinded the terminations in December after 18 contractors filed a class-action lawsuit, they then awarded 288 routes to Zum and Tip Top Transportation, an existing contractor, in January. To implement later start times, the school board approved a series of transportation overhauls, including expanding student walk zones, mandating bus rider registration and voting in June 2022 to terminate all existing local contracts in order to bid out all routes to new vendors. But double backs will be eliminated next year since all school bell times were condensed into three tiers, affording drivers less flexibility with their schedules. “It’s an equal employment opportunity and people should make their decision where they want to be.”ĭespite the county’s driver shortage, HCPSS maintained service for its 478 routes this year through the use of “double backs,” in which drivers pick up and drop off one group of students before returning to pick up a second group for a separate route. “Drivers who might be displaced because of half of the contract being awarded to us, who feel that they might get displaced, we have a job for them,” Garg said. While Howard County is Zum’s first East Coast operation, the company also serves school districts in California, Washington, Texas, Illinois and Tennessee. is 4.9 and that any parent who gives a three-star or below review will receive a same-day call from Zum staff to ask what went wrong. There’s driver accountability at all times.” “It keeps drivers safe, it keeps kids safe. “It’s well overdue if you ask me,” Seal said. “A big thing for most bus drivers is the pay and very few contractors offer 401Ks,” Seal said.Īlong with receiving more benefits, Seal said she was impressed by Zum’s technology platforms, which includes an app that lets parents track a bus’s location, view a driver’s profile and even rate their child’s ride on a five-point scale. Enterprises but left in April to join Zum after being offered the chance to train fellow drivers as a state-certified instructor. Baltimore resident Chrissy Seal had driven buses in Howard for 14 years with contractor M.B.G.
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