54 Howard County school bus routes canceled through the first week of classes

Aug. 29—School bus headaches continued Tuesday in Howard County as 54 routes were canceled and parents of students at 34 elementary, middle and high schools were told they would have to find another way to get their kids to school for the rest of the week.

On Monday, at least 27 Howard County schools experienced major busing delays. And six of those schools reported that at least one bus never showed up to take students to class.

Monday night, Zum Services, the county's newest school bus service provider that holds contracts for the majority of the county routes, said it would not be able to provide service for 54 routes at least until the end of this week, resulting in the cancellation of those routes.

HCPSS officials told parents on those routes they had to find their own transportation until further notice. The system plans a Wednesday morning news conference to further address the situation.

According to an email Tuesday from HCPSS, absences resulting from the route cancellations will be excused.

Board of Education member Jolene Mosley said the Zum routes were canceled because of staffing issues. Zum Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

Cherisa Andrews has a 10th grader at Atholton High whose bus route was canceled. Andrews also has twin fourth graders at Gorman Crossing Elementary, who are within walking distance of their school.

"It's a huge disruption," Andrews said. "Not only am I a working mom, I have elementary school kids and I have to figure out how to get to and from the high school when my husband is already gone for the day for work — with two other smaller kids at home that need to be up and out of the door for school."

Andrews, who lives about 4 miles from Atholton High, said she has not found a good solution to the transportation conundrum yet, adding that the people hurt most by the cancellation are the students.

"It increases anxiety," Andrews said, "and it makes it harder for them to settle. It's already hard for kids in the beginning of the school year, who had the fun in the un-structure of summertime, to go back to a school environment. And it's important to establish those routines and structures, which this totally disrupts."

Mosley said the transportation disruptions were unexpected, as Superintendent Michael Martirano indicated in an Aug. 10 memo that all bus routes would be covered. Mosley represents Howard's District 3, which includes North Laurel, Savage, Jessup, Guilford and Elkridge.

"This is a brand-new contract [with Zum Services]," Mosley said, "and to go right out the gate with a lot of failures in your initial implementation of your contract is pretty disappointing."

The school system has agreements with 21 bus contractors to provide service on 503 routes this fall. Zum Services had 230 routes before the cancellations; Tip Top Transportation, based in Elkridge, has 58. The 19 other contractors based in the region split the remaining 215 routes.

Mosley said she has been advocating for schools to provide virtual or asynchronous resources to students who must miss school, so that some learning may still occur while the problem is being fixed.

She has requested a public meeting with Martirano and other relevant staff, and said she believes the meeting would be scheduled soon.

Special education students who receive transportation as a part of their individualized education plan are a top priority, Mosley said, because HCPSS is legally required to provide them with the transportation specified in their individualized education plan.

Monday delays and no-shows

Monday's bus delays were caused by more than 200 buses belonging to the same contractor exiting the lot at the same time, according to Martirano. He said in an email that the contractor responsible has made adjustments to ensure that this does not occur again. No contractor was specified, but no Howard contractor other than Zum Services operates more than 200 routes.

Sara Bricker, of Ellicott City, said her 7-year-old second grader and 9-year-old fourth grader got on a bus with their names on the driver's list and were transported to the wrong school Monday morning. The children were supposed to be taken to Ilchester Elementary but were taken to Worthington Elementary instead, Bricker said.

"I don't fault the bus driver," Bricker said, "I think this is just where they were told to get kids. It's the bus company."

Bricker said her house is near the area zoned for students who attend Worthington, and she believes Zum Services accidentally put her children on a route for the wrong school.

Staff members at Worthington Elementary were helpful to the students once they arrived, Bricker said. She picked up her children and drove them to the correct school.

"It would have been more of a problem if I was a working parent," Bricker said, "but I stay home, so it worked out [for me] to go get them. I would have wanted to, because they were pretty upset, so it would not have been good if one of their parents hadn't come to get them."

Bricker said she followed the bus that transported her children home on Monday afternoon.

Curt Francisco, of North Laurel, the father of a Laurel Woods Elementary student, said he was told by the bus driver responsible for his child's transportation that many of Zum's drivers only recently arrived in Maryland from Washington state. That conversation occurred when the bus arrived at around 9:25 a.m., nearly a half-hour later than scheduled and about 10 minutes after school had started.

Other parents reported similar information on social media — that their child's bus driver arrived in Maryland from the West Coast within the last several weeks.

An Aug. 10 memo from Martirano stated that Zum may have to deploy up to 40 drivers from other jurisdictions to help cover routes during the first week of school if its Howard workforce was not ready in time for the school year.

"What we're trying to do is just work with the other parents in the neighborhood to see if we can come up with some type of a backup plan," Francisco said. "This morning, one of the other neighbors took all of our kids to school."

Some families received conflicting updates or no updates regarding the status of the bus. Francisco said the situation was especially confusing for his neighbors who are still learning English.

"What we'll do is just try to as a community to work together to see what we can do as a backup plan," Francisco said. "But you know if not having bus service persists I don't know what's going to happen. We've been talking about this all summer long and now all we can do is hope that bus service from the Zum contractor somehow kicks it into gear or they work it out. Otherwise, there will be some mornings that parents won't be able to take their kids to school."

Julie Kennedy, of Ellicott City, the mother of a 6-year-old first grader and 8-year-old third grader at Veterans Elementary School, said she enthusiastically downloaded Zum's bus tracking app and was reassured to see a driver practicing the route on the app. However, the app conveyed that her route's driver was yet to be assigned and kicked users off before the start of school on Sunday evening.

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After she arrived early at the bus stop with her kids on Monday, Kennedy said a late driver on a Dunloggin Middle School route advised her to simply drive her kids to school.

"The promise that we could have a bus tracker is false," Kennedy said. "The promise that the drivers will have electronic navigation is false. I mean, dude had no idea where he was, he had no idea where he was going, and he had a stack of papers with the route in front of him."

Kennedy said she believes Zum's promises are no more than smoke and mirrors.

"These delays are causing learning impacts for the children," Kennedy said Monday. "Because there were many students who were over an hour late this morning."

Of the 230 drivers that Zum needs to cover its routes, 130 were hired, 71 certified drivers were going through the company's onboarding process, and as many as 66 noncertified drivers should have been able to complete commercial driver's license certification in time for the school year, according to Martirano's Aug. 10 memo.

Many buses also were delayed Monday afternoon. For at least 10 elementary and middle schools, the latest buses arrived at the school around 5 p.m. According to an email from Mayfield Woods Middle School, three buses never arrived after school, and families were asked to secure their own transportation home. That email was sent just before 5 p.m.

Zum's bus route cancellations represent 20 buses previously set to provide transportation for students at 34 schools, including: Mount Hebron High, Centennial High, Atholton High, Wilde Lake High, Long Reach High, Hammond High, Oakland Mills High, Patapsco Middle, Wilde Lake Middle, Mayfield Woods Middle, Lake Elkhorn Middle, Clarksville Middle, Patuxent Valley Middle, Murray Hill Middle, Dunloggin Middle, Burleigh Manor Middle, Hammond Middle, St. John's Lane Elementary, Centennial Lane Elementary, Cradlerock Elementary, Thunder Hill Elementary, Bellows Spring Elementary, Atholton Elementary, Pointers Run Elementary, Bollman Bridge Elementary, Grossman Crossing Elementary, Phelps Luck Elementary, Swansfield Elementary, Waterloo Elementary, Northfield Elementary, Talbott Springs Elementary, Guilford Elementary, Bryant Woods Elementary and Running Brook Elementary.