At recent Board of Education meetings and in community updates, Superintendent Dr. Michael J. Martirano outlined several adjustments that HCPSS has made to realize improvements in student transportation services, including:
Correcting the routes provided to contractors to align with information on the bus locator,
Improvements to the process of how buses leave the Zum Services bus lot,
During the first few days of the school year, we addressed several logistical issues that impacted transportation. However, despite these adjustments, the biggest issue impacting the ability of bus drivers to deliver students to school in the morning and home in the afternoon on time is insufficient time between our school start times. Buses quickly become delayed at our earliest schools based on insufficient route timing, traffic delays, and competing with student drivers/car drop-offs entering and exiting schools at the same time.
Thousands of students have been experiencing delays that have interrupted instructional time at the beginning of the day and some students have been getting dropped off nearly two hours after their dismissal. School start time changes that will take effect on Wednesday, Sept. 20 to better support the on-time arrival of school buses.
The current routing for Tier 1 schools has buses arriving at the school 10 minutes before the first bell which did not take into account the significant traffic at schools within 10 minutes of school starting with families and students driving to school. In the morning, while the Tier 1 buses get to their first stop on time, they are getting stuck in the congestion trying to get onto the campus and then getting out of the campus to begin their Tier 2 pick-ups. Then they arrive to their Tier 2 school late, and subsequently are late to their Tier 3 schools.
The new start times will be implemented Wednesday, Sept. 20, because of the urgency to resolve these chronic delays and Sept. 20 is when our team will be ready to implement the new times after testing the new schedule. Delaying implementation would negatively impact new students enrolling in the system, including prekindergarten students and further delay our efforts to improve specialized routing. Launching the new times prior to a three-day weekend will also allow staff to mitigate any issues that are experienced during the first three days of implementation.
Before and after-school care service providers in HCPSS schools may need to adjust the start and end times. HCPSS is communicating these changes with those providers for awareness so they can make adjustments. Please contact your child's service provider for more information.
Yes. Board of Education Policy 2000 – School Board Governance charges the Superintendent with the responsibility for the administration and management of the school system. The daily operation of the schools is part of that administration and management.
The Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR) only permits private companies to provide transportation in school systems for after-school field trips, not daily school transportation.
With more buses completing their routes on time, we expect to have buses available for athletic team transportation. Currently, the delays have impacted the availability of buses for athletic team transportation and necessitated postponement.
The new school start time plan will be implemented for general bussing, which makes up the majority of all student transportation. However, we know that improvements must be made to our specialized transportation service, including buses that serve students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or who are in prekindergarten, along with buses that serve Cedar Lane School and Homewood Center.
