BCAT News

The Burlington Public Schools administration is working to improve the busing situation that has been a difficulty for some students and their parents this year.

BPS Director of Operations Bob Cunha gave an update to the School Committee on Tuesday about recent changes that he said should make things go more smoothly.

The biggest change was that since the start of the school year the district had been low on drivers. They had 14 full time drivers and two spares. However, starting this week the district had 16 full time drivers, two spares that are exclusively for bus driving and a spare driver shared between Burlington and Wilmington.

“We now have 18 full time drivers which is something we didn’t have before,” he said.

Superintendent Eric Conti said this was a step in the right direction.

“It’s common sense, ideally we want permanent drivers who know their routes and know their kids,” he said. “We were rotating drivers and people were missing their routes and missing their stops and that just delays things further. I know the first eight weeks of school haven’t been pleasant in regards to transportation.

Cunha said they also now have four people in dispatch, another increase in personnel.

Prior to this week we had 14 fulltime drivers and two spares.
As of this week we have 16 full time drivers and the two spares are additional to buses. One more spare shared between Burlington and Wilmington

We have four people in dispatch, 3 full time and one person filling in from another office.

“This will obviously help with communication to myself, the school departments and any parents that need be and communication back and forth between the buses if something happens,” he said.

Finally, Cunha and Conti said they have been working to make changes to the bus routes that parents have requested but that they can’t accommodate everybody.

“This is the first time we’ve had an opportunity to have major changes to the routes since the start of school,” Cunha said. “They did not address every request that came in but did a majority of them. Every time we make a change there is an effect somewhere else that could push back other stop times.”

“We are trying to make every possible change we can but adding stops and wanting the buses to move more quickly is counterintuitive so at some point we have to make some priorities and move forward,” Conti added.