Friday, January 17, 2020

What happened with Worcester schools transportation last night?

Good article from Scott O'Connell this morning, but just to be clear on the School Committee items coming from the discussion:

  1. Mr. Foley sent a standing item to the Finance and Operations subcommittee (which meets at least quarterly) on busing issues.
  2. Once MyStop is running, the School Committee is to receive weekly reports on time performance (how many buses were late or didn't run, which ones had to have routes picked up by the other for lack of drivers, by Durham or WPS).
  3. I added that a simple, smartphone-friendly form be added to the transportation website for families and students to use to report late buses; and
  4. That up until MyStop is running, that THOSE weekly results be shared, including the late bus reports also filed by administrators at the schools (who I urge to keep filing those reports!).

Update: on the video of the meeting, this starts at about 26 minutes in with Mr. Foley taking up the item, the public comment, and the response of members. The ongoing issue, as he says, is that the School Committee has no idea how Worcester Public School bus service really is in the city right now. There was an rejection that this is an issue from a few members--perhaps summed up as how could we bring this up again?--but we should note that this assurance is not based on any actual data. We can't know how this is going if we don't know.
Right now the only people who know this are, to some degree, the schools, and, of course, students and families.

If you're interested in what's going on with Framingham, you can read here, here, and here. And while you're looking, you could read about Cumberland this week.
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