Not a good sign

[pipsqueak]

I have been "fighting" a desire to keep Pip home this year instead of sending him to preschool.....

Today I received a letter with pick up/drop off times to go with the letter with class times received at the end of last week.

Pick up time = 810am
Drop off time =1220pm
Class time = 105-405 pm

Transportation office says I need to contact the school to change transportation times.

[freezorburn]

Huh. Well, that's something.

[pipsqueak]

Sent email to his teacher since I have no idea who else to contact - response is that she will send a few emails out and should hear back by end of week.

[pipsqueak]

And today I had to call the transportation office to report the bus had not arrived to pick Pip up for school.

They finally got a bus sent to pick him up an hour late.

Supervisor called and said that they were making changes to the bus routes and there had apparently been a miscommunication resulting in no one picking up Pip. With the route changes he will have a different bus driver starting tomorrow. Overheard in background when talking to dispatch that "the driver was not answering" so I'm not 100% sure I believe what the supervisor said.

[DGM]

Yikes!

[pipsqueak]

And today the school district sent 2, yes two, buses to pick up Pip. Second bus arrived 5-10 minutes after the first bus.

[freezorburn]

So now they're overcompensating

[freezorburn]

On the subject of transportation ... we haven't encountered the same level of incompetence, but just a disappointing lack of service. We live .9 miles from DS's school so we are considered to be within the walk zone. This is easily a 30-40 minute walk each way. I don't have that kind of time, to escort DS back and forth. He will get bussed to the Boys and Girls club 3 afternoons a week, but we have to figure something out for the other days.

So we might do a walking school bus with a couple other families who we have found that also live near us. At least while the weather is nice. Maybe carpool when it gets cold and rainy. I'm also drooling over a cargo bike with e-assist. I just feel like driving is overkill for this situation.

[pipsqueak]

freezorburn,we had that same issue when I was in 7th grade. The ONLY reason we couldn't ride the bus was because the mailing address was the closer street. If the mailing address had been the street you actually had to drive down to get to the apartment complex we would have been able to rise the bus. We solved it by riding our bikes the 2 miles to the junior high - can't do that with pre-k - kindergarteners though. On a humorous note though, we had a unique car and my dad would often stop at the grocery store on our route home. Whenever we saw the car there we would unload our backpacks and such into the backseat for Dad to haul home.

[freezorburn]

Well I guess they have to draw lines somewhere!

I rode my bike to the school and back today, just to see how long it would take. It's about 15 minutes each way, not bad. But I was on my road bike and I got pretty tired on the hills. I'm woefully out of shape. One option would be to attach a pedal trailer. But there's no guarantee that DS would also pedal and help! Which is why I like the e-assist cargo bikes. I test rode one the other day and I loved how it handled. And if/when DS gets more confident on his own bike, we can ride together in one direction and then I can tow his bike home, since he has afternoon bus service.

[pipsqueak]

And today......Pip's bus was more than 30 minutes late bringing him home. He normally arrives at 435, today he arrived at 510. (School gets out at 405 and they put the pre-K kids on the bus right before the bell rings to avoid the mass rush of older kids = over an hour on the bus for Pip today = mad mama)

No call to let me know he'd be late, nothing. Called in to transportation: "Driver called in sick but he should be there within 5 minutes."

Grrrrr. I'm ready to pull him from school.

[freezorburn]

That's messed up. It sounds like this is at the stage where you should escalate this. Not sure what would be your next step tho. Does your district have an ombudsperson?

[pipsqueak]

Sept 5, 2017 19:41:50 GMT -5 freezorburn said:

That's messed up. It sounds like this is at the stage where you should escalate this. Not sure what would be your next step tho. Does your district have an ombudsperson?

I honestly don't know about the ombudsperson.  It's just so ironic that in 2015 I was fighting to get him ON the bus and now I'm seriously considering removing him from the bus if not from school.

[freezorburn]

I wonder if there is a problem with the individual driver? Like maybe that person has a health issue and they are trying to accommodate them. But still -- with multiple incidents I think you would be right to bring this to the attention of higher ups.

[pipsqueak]

Sept 5, 2017 20:55:09 GMT -5 freezorburn said:

I wonder if there is a problem with the individual driver? Like maybe that person has a health issue and they are trying to accommodate them. But still -- with multiple incidents I think you would be right to bring this to the attention of higher ups.

The pickup route and the drop off route are done by different drivers. Last year, and summer school were also different drivers for pick up and drop off so I'm assuming that is the norm here.

Planning to call transportation supervisor tomorrow morning.....and transport him myself tomorrow at least.

[freezorburn]

Good luck!

[pipsqueak]

Less than satisfactory response. "Sorry for the inconvenience" and an invitation to call in anytime the bus is late.....

[freezorburn]

Ugh. Okay, who is that person's boss?

[pipsqueak]

Dh and I agreed - we're pulling Pip off the bus. We'll do parent provided transportation for the rest of this week and make further decisions over the weekend.

As frosting on the cake, I did tell the transportation supervisor that I was driving/Pip not riding the bus the rest of the week. The bus still showed up for pick up today. That's 4 screw ups in 7 school days.

[freezorburn]

I'm sorry. What a pain. I hope they can get their act together.

[pipsqueak]

The latest on this topic

I talked to the principal at ds's school on Friday. Since transportation last year was not a problem with him in AM preschool and with the hopes that the dispatch team is different in the morning vs afternoon and driving is easier on me if parent transportation ends up being the way things work out, we decided to move Pip back to morning preschool rather than pull him out completely at this point. The principal contacted the transportation director to highlight the seriousness of the problem as well as to begin the process of transferring Pip's transportation.

I drove Pip to/from morning preschool today. I missed the call but the pickup driver for the afternoon preschool left a voicemail in which he sounded confused and he said he was calling to make sure we weren't waiting for him to pickup Pip.

We sent an email to the transportation director detailing all the incidents of lack of communication or miscommunication and put the blame for the communication issues on the shoulders of the dispatchers and transportation department administration - dh and I are tired of them blaming the drivers. Transportation director responded with an email (since dh missed his call) saying that he would be meeting with key staff in the morning and he will call afterwards.

Idk if anyone cares about this but posting it here has served the purpose of documentation as things happened since we were questioning the date that transportation was contacted regarding the incorrect pickup/drop off times in the letter and the date is on my initial post.

[freezorburn]

I care! I'm glad the principal is involved now.

[pipsqueak]

Sept 11, 2017 21:51:44 GMT -5 freezorburn said:

I care! I'm glad the principal is involved now.

Thank you.  With the board so slow I wasn't sure if anyone was reading/wanting updates on the transportation drama in this corner of the world.

I am hoping that once this week is done, I only have to think about the bus in terms of daily routine and only have to call transportation to cancel service for a day because Pip is sick or has an appointment during school hours.

[freezorburn]

Yeah, it's been slow. Not sure what to do about it though. I don't feel like we need to pull more people in here, we just are who we are. I don't have much diaper talk left in me. Still trying to de-stash. A friend of mine is having a baby next month so I'm going to give her the ones that are in the best shape. Will probably donate the rest.

I'm trying to decide when to exit the FB groups. I occasionally feel compelled to respond to a post, but I also feel like there are plenty of good people in those groups to keep them going. And it would be nice to clean up my feed a little.

[pipsqueak]

I don't follow the FB groups so they don't show up in my feed, I just go to them when I want to.

[pipsqueak]

Per the transportation director, the dispatchers flag the driver boards when there is a change or a note for the driver. Our comments to him indicate to him an internal issue, possibly a driver not checking or outright ignoring a flag - and it's an issue that is less likely to be reported as people generally wouldn't report having the bus show up after they called to cancel service for a day. (In the case where there's only one student at the bus stop)

On the late arriving bus issue, the director said they're working on creating a email/text message system that could send out notifications based on information contained in the database. Dh told the director to sign us up as testers.

[freezorburn]

Well hopefully whatever was going on has been ironed out. I would hope they could iron out any glitches now that school is in full swing.

[pipsqueak]

So we switched Pip to the morning class ahead of district approval since driving through 4 school zones at dismissal time plus early rush hour for afternoon class pickup was making me more angry with the whole situation - morning class start time is after morning rush hour and the tail end of the other school's drop off crowds so the drive is much more pleasant even though the speed limit is reduced.

District admin is saying that we should leave Pip in the afternoon class as we don't need to change his placement over "1 incident." Pip's teacher responded that it was more than 1 incident and either they approve the change of placement or they withdraw Pip from the program.

Unrelated to our reasons for switching to the morning class, Pip is behaving better in the evenings since the switch. It's like he doesn't need a nap but he does need some early afternoon quiet time and he couldn't get that while in school. He's much more pleasant and not whiney this week at the supper table.

[pipsqueak]

I should note that one of the school zones I am driving through is for a high school.....

[freezorburn]

Sounds like the morning class is a better fit. I'm glad Pip's teacher is advocating for you!

Can relate a little to your commute -- we have to go through or around another school zone to get to DS's school. It's not so bad if we are going through on the early end of the drop-off period, but we cut it close on Wednesday and it was pretty busy getting through there. I should have picked a different route that day. Or done a lot of things differently. Oh well.