School Bus Chief on O.L.F. Bus, School Clocks That are Off

In the four weeks since school started, some families have felt the not-unexpected bus challenges that typically occur at the start of the school year, only to work themselves out after the first few weeks. However, this year it seems to be a bumpier road than usual, with some problems not seeming to resolve fast enough. Some parents have been frustrated that children are arriving late both to school in the morning and home in the afternoon; others say it’s causing a domino effect of traffic tie-ups at pick-up areas at Miller Driscoll and Middlebrook.

GOOD Morning Wilton spoke with the schools’ transportation director, Mary Channing yesterday to get her take on what may have caused some of the issues and whether parents should start to see an improvement quickly. One of the surprising reasons she said initial delays were probably happening was because there was a discrepancy between the clocks the buses use to set delivery times and the clocks at the schools–there were off by as much as even five minutes.

Channing said she discovered early last week that at least one school was off on its bell time–the dismissal time they “think it is inside the school”–versus what time the buses run on, which is atomic time. “Atomic time is the correct time. It’s better known to most people as the time on your cell phone. Because our cell phones are controlled by the atomic clock. It’s an issue transportation doesn’t have any control over, but it does affect our schedule.”

According to Channing, the high school clock is only off from bus time by a few seconds. However, the Middlebrook clock was off by approximately five minutes.

“They thought it was earlier, as far as dismissal time. The drivers reported a problem and I went on site to discover what it was. We discovered that when we thought it was time to be leaving the school, we didn’t even have students called to go to buses yet. It also affected the parent pick-up traffic, because we had total gridlock in both directions on School Rd. outside of Middlebrook School. That was because the students weren’t outside to get into their parents’ cars. Even if the parents had staggered their arrival, it wouldn’t do any good because the children weren’t being let out. I believe that has been corrected at Middlebrook.”

Channing said even a matter of minutes makes a huge difference in how well the school bus transportation system works. “It’s huge for us, very huge. We still have a discrepancy at Cider Mill, and I have not yet heard a reply from Miller-Driscoll, so I do not yet know if I have a discrepancy there or not.”

Such a delay could easily lead to a domino effect, causing ripples of delays to multiply throughout pickup and drop-off times, possibly contributing to some of the major delays in students arriving home that are being reported by some Miller-Driscoll parents.

The time discrepancy was an unusual factor to the start of the year, which Channing said usually involves working some kinks out each September. “It’s basically a typical year for us. We have the same number of drivers, few new drivers, we’ve had very little change in our routes, so there was no reason to believe that they wouldn’t work out with a certain amount of time for the new drivers to get accustomed to the routes. All the drivers have new children and new stops on their routes as children move, from year to year from one school to the next school. There were no buses cut from last year.”

With five-day full day kindergarten there are more children on the afternoon Miller-Driscoll buses as well this year. Channing doesn’t think that impacts the transportation times for the elementary school’s routes. She does request that parents try to have their children ready at the bus stops when the bus arrives.

“That doesn’t mean they’re inside the front door, or down the driveway, or in the car. It means they’re standing, ready to get on the bus when the bus arrives. That has been a big issue. We’ve had to wait 2-3 minutes on occasion, and when that snowballs, you can imagine, at two or three stops along the way, it makes a big difference in the time we’re able to get to school.”

The Extracurricular Effect, Especially CCD

“Part of the problem too stems from the start time of extracurricular activities, which of course, we have no control over,” Channing said. “Whether those programs are at Comstock, at the Y, at soccer fields, wherever around town. We base our bus schedules on dismissal times. As an example, Miller-Driscoll dismisses at 3:35 p.m. so our buses are scheduled for pickup at 3:35 p.m. or later. At all the schools we allow all our buses 20 minutes to get in and get off campus at dismissal time. Which would give us until 3:55 p.m. to leave Miller-Driscoll. We’re just about there right now. The issue is that it doesn’t fit in with private, extracurricular schedules.”

One extracurricular activity in particular has caused additional transportation-related stress for some Miller-Driscoll parents:  after school CCD classes, which started last week. On GOOD Morning Wilton‘s Facebook page and elsewhere, several parents suggested offering bus service between M-D and Our Lady of Fatima, where CCD classes are held. Such bus service was offered several years ago, but was discontinued.

Channing said she’s open to the possibility of reinstating bus service between Miller-Driscoll and OLF; however, several things would have to happen first for it to work out. The first would be understanding that CCD students would have to wait at the school until an available bus had completed its run bringing its assigned M-D children home; Channing couldn’t mix an OLF run with regular school transportation.

“It’s been discussed in past years with both the school and the church. It’s a matter of timing. We need be able to pick up the students at the school later because we can’t use buses that are transporting to residences to also go to the church if it impacts the school-to-home part of it. That’s what happened many years ago.”

In past  years OLF has not wanted to delay the start time of CCD classes; neither have Miller-Driscoll administrators wanted to supervise CCD students for the extra time it would take for a bus to return to the school and shuttle children to OLF. “It’s over 100 children and would involve probably having them wait in a gym, and it wasn’t something that Miller-Driscoll thought they had to staffing to accomplish.”

Channing has not had conversations this year with either OLF or Miller-Driscoll principal Cheryl Jensen-Gerner about an OLF bus, but she is “absolutely” open to discussing it. But even if it did come to fruition, OLF and the parents involved would have to pay for that extra transportation run of the bus. Such a run would cost approximately $65 per bus per hour each of the days CCD transportation would be requested.

“It would be similar to a charter, and it would be paid directly to the bus company,” Channing explained. “I’d have to research the timing and the number of students.”