nothin Parents Press School Brass On Bus Chaos | New Haven Independent

Parents Press School Brass On Bus Chaos

Christopher Peak Photo

Fred Till, the school transportation director, changes a parent’s route.

Dakenya Johnson: Five blocks too far.

I don’t know where I’m at,” an 11-year-old told her mom on the phone, right after a school bus driver told her she had to get off at an unfamiliar corner in the Dwight neighborhood.

A month later, after getting through that parental nightmare, Dakenya Johnson now knows where her daughter is going to be picked up and dropped off every day. But she still thinks the five-block walk from their house is too far.

She doesn’t know if the district is going to fix it, and her patience is running out.

District officials, meanwhile, said they’ve been working through a queue of hundreds of other complaints just like that, after a rerouting eliminated almost half the school bus stops from previous years.

They said they’re getting close to clearing out a backlog of complaints, and they asked for just a little more time.

Those conflicting timelines came head to head at this school year’s first City-Wide Parent Team meeting, held this past Thursday night at Wilbur Cross High School, where Johnson joined dozens of other moms and dads in demanding answers from Fred Till, the district’s transportation director.

Everyone admitted that the district screwed up, especially in the way parents found out about the transportation overhaul days before the school started. But the question now is how to fix it.

In a contentious back-and-forth at last Thursday’s meeting, Johnson and Till asked each other to see the situation from their perspective: to feel the urgency of a mom who’s worried sick about her kid’s safety and to feel the frustration of a system that’s unable to keep up with the barrage of requests.

It’s easy to make a mistake, but it’s hard to fix it,” said Nijija-Ife Waters, the City-Wide Parent Team president, who organized the event.

Dakenya Johnson: Five blocks too far.

After sending their kids off for babysitting, parents sat around round tables in Wilbur Cross’s foyer and listened to Fred Till, the district’s transportation director, explain why school buses needed to be rerouted.

Till said that, each year, the school district had added more and more stops, without taking any out. He said drivers were stopping in front of 200 corners where no one lived anymore.

The problem is that this district, for a number of years, has rolled over and over and over. But in the process, they kept adding and adding and adding. In 10 years, they added 150 buses to your system, because instead of streamlining, they just added a stop,” Till said. You want this? Okay, they’d say yes. It wouldn’t surprise you to know how much we’re paying.”

Till said that wouldn’t be happening any more. To save money — estimated initially at $3.8 million, almost double what had been budgeted — he said he’d be telling parents that some requests are unreasonable.

That’s when Johnson put her hand up to ask a question. She said she didn’t understand why Till didn’t just eliminate efficiencies, like taking out the 200 no-shows. Why had he needed to replace everything with stops that were so much farther away? she asked.

Why can’t you just go through and make those changes? Why would you change all these kids in New Haven, have them walking farther?” Johnson said. You all see that it’s affecting so many people. Why can’t you simply put these kids back where they are and just go through and correct what kids goes here or there?” I could care less if it’s five kids on a bus. If they’re going to be safer a block away from home, that’s what we pay taxes for.”

Till said the district couldn’t afford to keep doing things the way it always had.

I don’t disagree with you, I really don’t. I could tell you right now that I could give everybody everything that they want. We could put 100 more buses in,” Till said. But if we don’t have the money to afford it, it’s not going to happen.”

That didn’t explain why this year had been so chaotic and why they couldn’t have eliminated other inefficiencies, Johnson pushed back.

There wasn’t a problem these last umpteen years,” she said. If you have so many people down at transportation, so many [staff] helping out — truancy officers, human resources, all different departments — simply you could have put it back the way it was and slowly gone through. The same way you’re trying to implement each person’s problem now.”

One little girl I know, she had to walk four blocks. She’s 11 years old. At the end of the day, somebody tried to pick her up. Don’t you need a ride? It’s dark out here.’ Well, guess what, if you all hadn’t made these changes, that girl would have been a block away from home,” Johnson went on. It’s not a matter of if’ something happens; it’s when.’ When are you going to implement these big changes? After somebody’s kid is molested, goes missing, gets shot and killed, hit by a car? C’mon, now, don’t tell me it’s because 200 people don’t live here anymore. If that was the issue, that’s what you should have dealt with, not messed up the whole entire school system.”

Parents burst into applause, then piled on. Who could they call in an emergency while no one’s been answering the phones? they asked. Who’s to blame if a bus driver forces a kid to get off at the wrong stop? Till listened silently.

Nijija-Ife Waters: Beating up on the district staff won’t do any good.

Waters called for a time-out and asked for everyone to back off. She said that everyone in Central Office knew the district had screwed up, and going after them wouldn’t change things now.

I felt like, if you knew how and why this happened, it’s not going to take away what happened. But if you listen to the numbers that has been affected, us keep screaming and yelling and fussing is not going to change anything,” Waters said, as parents muttered their disagreement.

What I don’t want you to do tonight is to beat up on the people that are here trying to give you the information,” she added. I get it: Phones are ringing and no one’s answering. But think about thousands of people that are calling in at the same time, just like you. It’s a process.”

Matt Wilcox, a school board member, stood up, apologized and asked for everyone not to leave until they had a promise they’d get a call back. Then parents went off to meet with district staffers.

Till made changes to the routes on a laptop, letting other parents look over his shoulder to see how long each adjustment took.

When things calmed down, parents started talking solutions.

They pointed out that the city is hiring crossing guards and could hire more as a way to help those dealing with unemployment. They said they’d volunteer to take turns watching over bus stops or riding along the route as monitors. They said schools could hold mid-summer open houses where principals could ask for current addresses. And they said neighbors need to organize for safer streets if parents are too scared to let their kids walk a few blocks.

Close to 9 p.m., Till finished up the last parent’s change. He said that, in walking parents through the complicated process of finding students, mapping their route and looking at alternate pickups, he could actually show them why it had taken over a month to make all the changes.

It’s not like calling up Uber or a taxi company,” he said. I sympathize with the people because change comes hard to anybody, especially at this magnitude. It’s a lot of people. Most of the time, when you talk to them and they know that you care, they understand. But you don’t even have enough hours in the day to do that.”

Till said that these one-time changes would create lasting efficiencies. He said that the bus stops wouldn’t change much, because they can now serve multiple schools.

It was inevitable; it had to happen,” he said. There’s an efficiency in dollars that can be utilized for something else to better educate your student.”

Michael Pinto: Almost done.

At the most recent regular Board of Ed meeting in late September, district officials said they had processed nearly 1,500 requests for changes, with about 200 more outstanding.

In the process, they said they had added 600 more bus stops for a total of 5,100 stops — still close to half of last year’s 8,800 stops.

Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, the schoolboard’s secretary, suggested that the district should now conduct a comprehensive review of each bus stop. Just because a parent didn’t report an issue doesn’t mean the stop is safe, she explained.

I don’t think we should be waiting for them to bring up the question,” Jackson-McArthur said. I know that there are kids at their stop who still cross Ella Grasso Boulevard and their parent is just too busy working two jobs to be able to get there” to Central Office.

Three other board members, Toni Harp, Darnell Goldson and Ed Joyner, all added their agreement.

We should be looking at reaching out to every single family in this district to make sure their needs are met,” Goldson said. I know I’m still getting several — maybe up to 10 or so — emails a day about this issue. What I’m hearing back is that they’re being dealt with. But they shouldn’t have to email the president [of the school board] so that their issues get fixed.”

Michael Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, said that the district is working with city mappers to overlay the bus routes with crime and crash data to look at the safety of some of these stops.”

Tags:

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

Avatar for DwightAndHowe

Avatar for Thomas Alfred Paine

Avatar for DwightAndHowe

Avatar for Thomas Alfred Paine

Avatar for Smitty

Avatar for One City Dump

Avatar for Smitty

Avatar for 1644

Avatar for CityYankee2

Avatar for ElmUrbanist