Transportation Stories
The Times had a story about the district's transportation issues. As with any change, there are growing pains.
Calls to the district's transportation complaint hotline increased by 16 percent — from 9,500 to 11,000 — in the first two weeks of the school year, Bishop said.
The percent of district students using the bus service decreased by half a percent this year, according to an analysis of numbers recently released by the district.
It's just one of those things," School Board member Peter Maier said. "If I have a choice between putting money into the classroom and putting money into transportation, I would prefer to put money into the classroom, because they're not learning on the bus."
But Duggan Harman, the district's executive director of finance, said he is concerned that the projected $4 million in savings may not be reached. His office is analyzing the issue, with a report expected next month.
Remember when I said the district loves to tout "savings" but we rarely see evidence of this? Well, at least Mr. Harman is giving us early warning.
While that is a classic - what, me worry? - line from Maier, there was an interesting comment from someone who said they were an SPS driver:
Why don’t you read the handbook you gave us that states the part: *the bus environment is an extension of the classroom.
Funniest line from a Lowell parent (that received many comments):
"It just seems inhumane to me to have an 8-year-old standing outside for 15 minutes."
I do agree with one comment that said if the district expects the families to get their students to school on-time, the district should aim for the same. I am a little confused at this point about chronic late buses.
From the Magnolia Voice blog, it appears the district had an opportunity to apply for a state Department of Ecology that would add technology that would reduce diesel emissions on buses. Eight state districts are receiving this grant money. From the Magnolia Voice:
Over the past 10 years, the DOE has provided close to $30 million to help school districts add emission-reduction technology. With the new devices, the DOE is estimating that each bus will use on average 125 fewer gallons of gas per year.
Apparently Tom Bishop in Transportation didn't know about this grant until a week before it was due. There may be another round of funding. The district says that they will convert 15% of its buses to cleaner burning propane.
Just as Mark Teoh missed a deadline on renewing the MAP contract (and oddly, it still hasn't been done due to Steve Sundquist pulling it off the Board agenda last week), I wonder about the Grants department not monitoring and helping other departments know about opportunities and deadlines.
Calls to the district's transportation complaint hotline increased by 16 percent — from 9,500 to 11,000 — in the first two weeks of the school year, Bishop said.
The percent of district students using the bus service decreased by half a percent this year, according to an analysis of numbers recently released by the district.
It's just one of those things," School Board member Peter Maier said. "If I have a choice between putting money into the classroom and putting money into transportation, I would prefer to put money into the classroom, because they're not learning on the bus."
But Duggan Harman, the district's executive director of finance, said he is concerned that the projected $4 million in savings may not be reached. His office is analyzing the issue, with a report expected next month.
Remember when I said the district loves to tout "savings" but we rarely see evidence of this? Well, at least Mr. Harman is giving us early warning.
While that is a classic - what, me worry? - line from Maier, there was an interesting comment from someone who said they were an SPS driver:
Why don’t you read the handbook you gave us that states the part: *the bus environment is an extension of the classroom.
Funniest line from a Lowell parent (that received many comments):
"It just seems inhumane to me to have an 8-year-old standing outside for 15 minutes."
I do agree with one comment that said if the district expects the families to get their students to school on-time, the district should aim for the same. I am a little confused at this point about chronic late buses.
From the Magnolia Voice blog, it appears the district had an opportunity to apply for a state Department of Ecology that would add technology that would reduce diesel emissions on buses. Eight state districts are receiving this grant money. From the Magnolia Voice:
Over the past 10 years, the DOE has provided close to $30 million to help school districts add emission-reduction technology. With the new devices, the DOE is estimating that each bus will use on average 125 fewer gallons of gas per year.
Apparently Tom Bishop in Transportation didn't know about this grant until a week before it was due. There may be another round of funding. The district says that they will convert 15% of its buses to cleaner burning propane.
Just as Mark Teoh missed a deadline on renewing the MAP contract (and oddly, it still hasn't been done due to Steve Sundquist pulling it off the Board agenda last week), I wonder about the Grants department not monitoring and helping other departments know about opportunities and deadlines.
Comments
I really wish that the last line of that Lowell mom's quote had not been included. I think it undercut her whole point. (Obviously, it would be more inhumane to keep a kid INSIDE for 24 hours a day.)
In this whole discussion, I keep wondering, what do well-run medium size urban districts do about transportation? From a quick look, Boston's looks similar to ours (including transportaion to 'pilot' schools and 'innovation' schools.)
I'd love it if our bus drivers Twittered us when they are delayed or running late.
I think many impacts of reduced service could be offset by the smart use of technology. WSDWG
Given that our bus is still around 10-15 minutes late each day due to being a third tier route, this would be a huge help. It takes me about 10 minutes to walk to the community stop, then I wait around another 10-15 minutes for the bus. But, if I knew exactly when the bus arrived at school, I could plan my trek to the stop accordingly. Since I run a small business that bills time in 15-minute increments, I could actually use those extra minutes productively each day.
I don't see why the district couldn't do something like this to help parents plan. If they can't get the buses there when scheduled, and if they won't change the schedule to reflect the actual arrival times, they least they can do is give us a way to know where the bus is in real time.
The fault in this whole new system is NOT the drivers - many of whom are feeling extremely stressed by trying to meet the unrealistic schedule they've been given. The problem is the "new" plan itself - which was created with nearly zero line staff input - input that predicted many of the issues experienced this year. If only leadership gave a damn.
I suspect Eric is spot on, that privacy issues would keep the GPS of school buses from being broadcast.
While the drivers should NOT be tweeting, perhaps central transportation office can be monitoring (either GPS or by radio contact with drivers who are predicting themselves to be late) and tweeting. That might be the right balance between getting good information to parents and avoiding giving too much information which could be a privacy thing.
I see two problems, however.
One the buses would have to fitted with a system provide this information. Incidentally, Metro buses aren't actually fitted with GPS, just radio transmitters, which are somewhat inaccurate, and when the bus goes off the route ( snow? ) the radio transmitters are useless. Metro has been promising GPS for years, but has not delivered.
Second, Metro doesn't actually provide or maintain apps for using this data. They provide a data feed and third parties have used this to build apps.
Maybe some enterprising parent would build an app if the district could provide the information, but clearly the customer base for such an app is pretty small.
Finally, if the district can't manage to move their enrollment system off a VAX until 2010, why would we think they would be capable of creating a publically accessible bus tracking system, particularly when they are looking at making changes to the bus system which reduce their costs while increasing parent costs?
Bus buddy
One main reason for our nutty three tier schedule is that supposedly it is too hard to attract and maintain part time drivers. What if we made the job attractive to part time workers?
wondering
And Peter Maier really didn't do himself any favors with that quote.
From what my child says, they sometimes wait outside for 10-15 minutes until it shows up to pick them up. It's simply not getting to school on time for pick-up.
While I won't go as far as saying it's "inhumane," it does seem like the system needs tweeking. If the bus can't consistently make it to school on time, they need to add another bus or rework the routes.
-stuck in the third tier
1) Worth testing K and 9th (with EOC exams)?
2)Value of test v. lost instruction time (1 day at the current 3x year testing)?
3)Resources used for test. Big problem at the HS level when all the computers are used for testing and students can't use for school work?
4) Can we pull back on this test and save some $$$?
Staff working on; presentation 11/16 and hopefully we will see a reduction in testing discrict-wide. (Because I think DeBell is right on!)
Isn't this year 2 of NSAP? So the "choice/option" bit can't be applied to all 2-5th graders who had some sort of choice but did not necessarily include access to their 2011 neighborhood school.
That's exactly what I was going to say - it was my understanding that the buses are part of a contracted fleet. They are not owned or maintained (directly) by the district. If the company that owns that buses doesn't see value in obtaining the grant funds to upgrade it's fleet, then maybe the district should look for a different contractor.
When my oldest was in first grade and began taking the bus halfway across town, we had a few frustrating incidents where we were waiting for the bus or were unsure if she had even gotten on the bus. We emailed Mr. Bishop and several administrators to express our frustration and suggest solutions only to receive silence or "yeah, sorry 'bout that" in return.
We were finally driven to find our own solution after I waited at a stop for nearly two hours on a dark, rainy evening with a fussy one year old. Fortunately, I was in car, but I could have easily been walking. I just couldn't leave because the bus might show up at any time, but I couldn't find out where it was, either.
We decided to get our first grader a cell phone with GPS - something we never imagined we'd need to do. It was worth it for the piece of mind. Even if she didn't think to call (or hadn't yet figured out how to) to say that she missed the bus or that the bus was late; we could look online and see approximately where she was and figure out if she had missed the bus or estimate how far from her stop she was. We could also call her to confirm, if we needed to.
It was reasonably priced, and easy to configure to block features and limit use to specific numbers and times, but it was yet another cost that we absorbed due to the unpredictability of SPS and Transportation.
So; while it's great to press transportation to solve it's problems, I recommend you save yourselves a few grey hairs and find a solution that works for you until they do.
The opposite is true with grants, federal deadlines for getting funds, etc. In those cases, the OTHER party holds the money -- and we don't get it (or maybe don't get it) unless we follow whatever rules they set up for giving away their money. If I were District management, I would take as much time as I needed to vet my requirements for what I wanted before SPENDING my money -- but would be darn sure that I hit the deadlines in asking someone else to spend their money on (or give their money to) me.
But on the technology piece -- while I agree that they don't want the public at large to know where every bus is, for security reasons, and the driver is too busy to twitter -- how hard would it be, really, to outfit each bus with a "bus phone" and find an older child responsible enough to tweet locations on late days. We let these kids handle safety patrol at their schools. Parents who need the info could sign onto the twitter feeds. (Frankly, a group of bus families could do this on their own, without any District involvement, I suppose, but it might be nice to make it available for all buses).
On Maier: I agree with whoever (Eric B?) noted that Maier is not doing himself any favors -- especially among those who follow board decisions enough to know that he has voted for almost every (I can't think of a no vote, but maybe I am misremembering) single expensive proposal ever made by MGJ or Dr. E to divert money AWAY from students (coaches, NTN contract, MAP contracts, expensive Discovery Math consumables, budgets with 100+ coaches to enforce fidelity of implementation, school closings, etc.).
And finally Po3: I can't tell whether you have hard proof, or are merely infering from behavior -- but boy, boy, boy do I hope you are right. This is EXACTLY what needs to be done -- some real analysis on where (and how often) MAP testing might be worth what we are paying -- and where it is NOT -- given how many things that we KNOW are worthwhile are being cut or underfunded. Teoh's presentation was so weak, at least in my opinion. And then -- when they extended the deadline -- I thought -- could it be? Are they actually demanding real analysis? It almost makes me giddy!
SPS Mom
If, for example, there was a full hour between the start of first tier and the start of second tier and then another full hour before the start of third tier schools, would that give enough of a cushion so problems creating delays on one route would not carryover to the next route as well?
It would, of course, significantly change start times. If the first tier schools (elementary schools I would hope) would have to start around 7:45 so the third tier schools (high schools I would hope) could start at 9:45. I guess that means that the high schools wouldn't finish until 4:15. What would be messed up by that?
A few things that could be messed up in the short-term are sports, after-school clubs, jobs, time for homework. And a 4:45 dismissal would require a lot of high-schoolers to take public transportation in the middle of rush hour and after dark in the winter months (something I won't allow my 16-yr-old to do because I don't want her walking home from the bus stop or light rail after dark).
I do think some f these things could adjust given the time, but I believe some sports need to practice early because of lighting issues.
Any idea ow many high-schoolers take yellow buses?
SolvayGirl
I went to a talk by a UW Biologist at RHS a few weeks ago. Adolescents NEED to start later. It is an ingrained part of their Biology. Sports, after school jobs and needs of younger sibs should not be driving what should be an academic decision. Some Minnesota school Districts flipped start times and saw significant improvements in HS students' performance including a reduction in drop out rates.
We know it improves academic outcomes and decreases drop out rates. We know it improves safety among teen drivers. We know it decreases depression & anxiety diagnoses among teens. We know it decreases teen pregnancy and substance abuse to have teens in school in the afternoon. We know that there are biological reasons that teens are sleep deprived with early school starts.
I can't believe we are still requiring teens to be at school for the early shift. And I really can't believe that we devote their best learning hours to afternoon sports practice.
-High school parent