Under Boston Public Schools’ (BPS) new transportation policy, the district will automatically cease bus transportation for students who are considered “inconsistent riders.”
Starting in May, BPS will implement a Ridership Procedure that would pause student bus assignments based on consistent non-ridership. BPS said this would improve the efficiency and performance of these bus routes.
NewsCenter 5 reported on the new policy, which states that if a student does not ride the bus for 10 consecutive school days without providing prior notification in the Zum app to cancel a student’s scheduled bus rides, BPS staff will contact the student’s parents or guardians and notify them that their children will be removed from the route.
BPS leaders believe approximately 1,000 students have not been consistently riding the district’s buses this year.
Families will have three business days to notify BPS transportation whether their students plan to return to riding the bus. They can also opt back in at a later date, and opt-outs can carry over from year to year.
“Even if only some of the students assigned to the stop don’t ride the bus, pausing transportation for those non-riding students creates opportunities to move stops to more efficient locations when we are creating routes for next school year,” said Sujata Wycoff, deputy chief of communications at BPS, in a statement shared with The Boston Globe.
For years, BPS has been plagued by transportation operations. The policy change announced on Wednesday, April 16, is the latest in the district’s attempts to improve the situation. Ahead of this school year, the district debuted the new Zum app and announced that its buses were fully staffed with drivers and monitors.
Transportation is one of the areas the district was mandated to revamp under a three-year state improvement plan that ends in June. Under the agreement, the district must have a 95% arrival rate, which it is now meeting.
The Boston Globe reported that students were stranded by no-show buses or late buses months into the current school year, including student-athletes who missed games or had to use ride-share vehicles or taxis to arrive to their destinations.
