To solve bus driver shortage, BPS proposes altering school start times. Teachers want to know more.

Now the district has begun to implement a plan it believes would address the shortage of bus drivers without needing to hire more, but it's meeting initial resistance from the group that needs to agree to it.

The district's aim is to adjust school start times, primarily for K-8 schools, to allow bus drivers enough time to complete two routes in the morning as opposed to the conventional one. Because recruiting more bus drivers has not proven an effective strategy, creating a schedule that allows existing drivers to transport more students is a "legitimate solution," said Nathaniel Kuzma, general counsel for Buffalo Public Schools, on Wednesday.

Instead of the two existing bell or start times – 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. – the district is proposing three different times, at 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30 a.m., Kuzma said.

Changing the start times is not something the district can do unilaterally, however. The collective bargaining agreement between Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation, established in 2016, said teachers were not to begin work before 7:50 a.m. nor end work after 4:05 p.m. Kuzma said the district sent a memorandum of understanding late last week asking the teachers union to agree to modify the contract language to implement their plan. 

Moving forward with the concept would require BTF President Phil Rumore to sign off on the memorandum, a legal document that essentially lays out a proposed agreement between two sides. But with the teachers union in contentious contract negotiations with the district, which has prompted union mobilization and sparring at a recent school board meeting, Rumore on Wednesday accused the district of not describing to teachers the "specifics" of the plan behind the request to change contract language.

Rumore's memo, addressed to the superintendent, Kuzma and the school board, took umbrage with the clause "the District may change the starting and ending time at schools to accommodate saving on bus routes."

"... Any time the District chooses to change starting/ending times, it can, as long as it 'says' it is to save money on busing. Whether it is in the best interest of schools, parents and staff is not a factor," Rumore wrote in the memo.

More issues Rumore raised in BTF's response:

• How parents and teachers would adjust child care schedules on short notice

• How after-school programs would function

• How later start times under the new plan would impact the time at which students arrive home

• How parents with children in two different schools would adjust to a starting time change

• How long students under the 7:30 a.m. start time would be asked to wait for the bus in the dark

Kuzma stressed that the district is asking teachers to change their schedule by no more than a half hour, and the changes will not lengthen the teachers' workday beyond the 7 hours and 15 minutes dictated by the current CBA. Additional notes in the district's MOU allow for transfer opportunities for teachers who face a hardship due to the schedule changes.

"For the 2022-2023 school year only, the District shall have the ability to make bell times changes during the school year provided it inform teachers with 30 days' notice of any proposed change in a school's bell time," reads the MOU sent by the district. The start times would be no earlier than 7:30 a.m. and end times no later than 4:45 p.m., the legal proposal continued.

Kuzma said the district is not sure how many teachers and students this might affect, but he said the district's K-8 schools, of which there are 25 according to the BPS website, would be the most impacted. Special education teachers and students in the district's high schools would be, too.

The Urban Think Tank, a parent coalition comprising pastors, lawyers and other community advocates, Tuesday urged Buffalo teachers to sign the agreement due to the transportation situation reaching a "crisis level."

"The teachers union can solve this problem with a stroke of a pen," said Sam Radford, who leads the not-for-profit organization with Bishop Michael Badger and L. Nathan Hare. "We're looking at thousands of kids who will not be picked up, and that's a major, major concern for us."

Radford explained Tuesday that staggered start times would not only essentially solve the driver shortage by adding more than 100 routes, it would also help the district resolve another byproduct of route consolidation: more than 50 students riding a single bus, sometimes without an aide, he said.

Radford has served on Operation Sunrise, a transportation committee of stakeholders formed by the district, since June. He said the committee learned earlier this month that more than 2,000 kids would be picked up late or not picked up at all if their parents were unable to drive them to school. Radford said that even though the proposed change in start times could conflict with existing child care schedules or cause potential stress for teachers, there was a clear higher priority.

"We need every child in school every day on time," he said. 

But the teachers union began voicing its frustration against the school district in late August, mobilizing for rallies at City Hall and at individual schools to demand a new collective bargaining agreement. BTF's cries were for less "insulting and demeaning" offers from the school district, Rumore said, with more than 150 teachers circling a small area in Niagara Square after just two days' notice.

Tensions escalated at a special school board meeting Aug. 31, which saw Kuzma and Rumore spar over the lack of progress in negotiations and hinted at the distance still separating the two sides.

The disagreement has spilled over into discussions about Buffalo's response to the nationwide school bus driver shortage, which preceded but was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. School officials said in August that the district was short about 100 bus drivers and about as many aides, and the process to hire new drivers was riddled with obstacles.

Daily routes that once numbered close to 800 now barely exceed 400, officials said. In addition to school safety, transportation concerns are among the biggest problems the district is facing.

Late this summer, Williams assembled a committee of stakeholders to brainstorm transportation alternatives, which ranged from considering gas mileage reimbursement for parents who drive their own children, providing NFTA bus passes to aid families without vehicles, and adjusting arrival and departure times. When less than 5% of parents responded positively to the reimbursement offer, Williams said she's planning to launch a small pilot reimbursement program later this fall.

"None of those has been a silver bullet," Kuzma said Wednesday.