With few solutions to bus driver crisis, BPS parents, students should 'prepare for delays'

"I hate it – not just for myself as a mother, but for my children," she said Saturday outside the Buffalo Central Terminal, where Fillmore Council Member Mitch Nowakowski hosted a back-to-school backpack giveaway. "They never know if they're going to get to school on time, or if they're going to get to school at all."

Dinah Hardy pointed to each of the four children standing next to her, rattling off their destinations when school begins Sept. 6.

"Daycare, daycare, school, high school – it's a lot trying to get them to school in the morning," she said while urging one of the children, Kordelle, to tie his shoes.

Hawa Mberwa attended the backpack giveaway with her younger brother Mahadi, who goes to School 3 on Porter Avenue. She said because her mother and sister work in the mornings, the family relies on the yellow bus to transport Mahadi to school. "It's a real stress," Mberwa said about her brother's transportation. "Mornings are busy enough – school buses kind of make it easier, but if we try to take the kids ourselves, they're going to be late every day."

At her State of the Schools address Friday, new Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent Tonja M. Williams emphasized that her district is not alone in needing school transportation alternatives. She instead highlighted the district's efforts to alleviate the bus driver shortage by collaborating with transportation partner First Student, which said earlier this month it was short about 100 bus drivers for roughly 500 total routes.

While Williams announced plans to curb the effects of unreliable busing, there were few solutions presented, which means Buffalo Public Schools parents, students, teachers and bus drivers could face a challenging start to the school year.

"I really wish I could wave a magic wand and that this problem will be solved," Williams said. "If I could, I know that you know that I would. It is a complex, national problem, and we're doing all that we can to make sure our parents are informed."

Williams said she communicates with parents through robocalls twice each week, on Sundays and Wednesdays, and parents are to expect transportation updates on buffaloschools.org beginning Monday.

"We've been proactive in informing parents to please be prepared, unfortunately, for possible delays," Williams said.

Past delays both to and from school rankled parents and family members interviewed Saturday. 

"The sheet says the bus should get here by 8:15. Sometimes, it doesn't come until 9:30," said Hardy, who added there were times last year when a bus did not come at all. She said when no bus arrives, it is easy for kids to act up. "It sets off an attitude like, it's the weekend, there's no school. It's not making anything better."

After-school transportation is rife with its own issues. The district said earlier this month that decreasing students' 55-minute average bus ride was a goal, but that timeframe was short for some families.

"They never know if they're going to get home on time, and when they do get home, usually it's an hour, sometimes two hours late," said Jones, the mother of three Bennett Park students. "Then they're hungry and they've got to go to the bathroom since they've been on the bus for so long."

Williams said schools will be better prepared this year to care for students who must stay late, either to wait for a bus or for a parent to pick them up.

"We want to make sure that we have active staff prepared to supervise the children," the superintendent said during her address at City Honors. "For the afternoon, we have ordered nutritious, healthy and I'm hoping good-tasting snacks for the children who might have to stay later."

Regarding bus delays, Williams urged district parents to download on their smartphones First View, a First Student app that shows the location of a student's bus in real time. The app's purpose is to avoid having children wait at street corners for buses for hours at a time. It would help avoid the confusion Mberwa said she has experienced waiting with Mahadi for his bus to arrive.

"Every day, it's like a new bus aide – they don't know where to stop at, and sometimes they'll stop somewhere farther away," she said. "We will assume that's not his bus, since we're used to the bus stopping right here." The district held multiple hiring events this summer for bus aides, a job not for the fainthearted, and aims in its strategic plan to hire one aide per bus route.

In an email to parents, Williams said the district's transportation department has had success re-routing bus routes, one step to make busing more efficient in a district with 30,000 students. A committee of stakeholders earlier this month explored reimbursing parents 58.5 cents per mile to drive their own kids to school, and Williams said a pilot program attempting the strategy could begin soon.

"We are going to start small and make sure that we get it right," said Williams, who added that she consulted New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa on the matter recently.

Jones, whose children attend Bennett Park, supported further incentivizing parents to take their kids to school.

"If they could get that in order, where the parents could get some type of reimbursement, yeah, that would be great," she said.

The district has tried many strategies to recruit or reorganize bus drivers. Through First Student, they've raised wages and offered signing bonuses to bus drivers, with starting hourly wages at $25 to $28, according to a company representative. Williams said she's working with County Clerk Mickey Kearns to offer prospective drivers assistance in preparing to secure their Commercial Driver's License (CDL) which, along with a new entry-level training program, is required by law to drive a school bus.

In winter, the School Board voted to issue NFTA bus passes to students who live 1.5 miles or less from school. Two half days were added for the district's elementary schools, freeing up some drivers. Former Superintendent Kriner Cash even eyed help from the National Guard to drive the buses.

Mberwa said even solutions such as reimbursing parents for driving have holes.

"For parents who work morning until evening, that's going to be hard for them," she said. "They're probably going to have to always tell their boss, 'Oh, I'm going to be late.' And then being constantly late is going to risk them losing their job, and then now they can't provide for that child."

Jones, who said she's trying to adjust her work schedule to accommodate her children's pick-up times, is eager for the district to take action, but understands the reality of the driver shortage.

"I do wish they would hurry up and stop just talking about it and do something about it," she said. "Everything is hard at the moment, with the pandemic and everything, that messed everything up. I think everybody is doing as much as they can right now."