Boston City Council Demands Answers on Chronic BPS Bus Delays Affecting 22,000 Students

BOSTON — November 7, 2024 — Boston City Council presses BPS transportation officials over chronic bus delays hitting more than 2,000 students every morning. At a November 7 Committee on Education hearing chaired by Councillor Henry Santana, BPS Executive Director of Transportation Dan Rosengard apologized for first-week on-time performance that plunged to 47 percent in the morning — down from 73 percent the prior year — following a system-wide rollout of the Zoom GPS dispatch platform, which cost roughly $1 million to implement against an annual transportation budget of $173 million. Councillor Erin J. Murphy calculated the district had already spent about $43 million this school year while morning performance sat at roughly 90 percent, still leaving more than 2,000 students late daily. Councillor Edward M. Flynn called persistent late arrivals for wheelchair-using students at the Carter School in Roxbury "a civil rights violation," and sharply criticized the absence of any special education or academics representative on the panel. Bus Monitor Local 2936 President Sadie Jasmine testified that monitors earn $19.77 an hour, sometimes supervise four or five monitor-required children simultaneously, and in some yards wait for assignments in an outdoor tent with no heat; bus drivers union President Emmanuel Marcellus said 48 buses sat idle on the first day of school due to maintenance failures and that some routes are scheduled with as little as one minute between stops.