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School-bus woes start early for BPS this year

School officials say too many bus drivers decided not to show up to work today, forcing BPS and its bus operator to call in other bus companies, assign supervisors to bus routes and work with the MBTA to provide free rides on that system for students.

Although the bulk of BPS students report for school next week, BPS today promised school-bus rides to students at two in-district charter schools, 13 other charter schools and 11 special education programs. A spokesman says:

2,977 students were scheduled for yellow buses this AM; buses for 392 of these did not run.

In a statement, BPS says:

This is unacceptable to us and is unacceptable to our students and families, who count on having a reliable ride to school.

The local school bus driver's union, BPS and Veolia, which has the contract to operate school buses, have been feuding for a couple of years now over various issues.

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Comments

They are screwing over the children "for the children!"

This behavior by people entrusted with the safety of children is tantamount to child abuse or abandonment in my book.

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Isn't the whole point of a union to protect the rights of the workers while working with employers to resolve disputes? Seems like either the union is tacitly supporting these wildcat actions or they don't care about what's happening to their members and they're just collecting the dues.

This disproportionately impacts working families of course. Anyways, next week is going to be a disaster if this is what the drivers have in mind for the full BPS load.

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My ten year old son's bus was due to arrive (and every morning supposedly) at 6:42am. We arrived at the bus stop at 6:27am. The bus finally arrived at 7:14am. He was late for school on his first day and at a new school. Bummer walking into a new situation and a new class late. I guess we are lucky the bus arrived! I just hope it arrives in time for the rest of the year. He cannot be late for school on a regular basis. Beginning at 7:00am I tried to call the bus hotline but could not get through. I was not sure if I should call my husband at work to come and pick him up. I tried unsuccessfully to call the bus hotline a couple of more times through the day when I arrived home. Apparently every other parent must of been calling too. I finally got through to them and they told me they were short on drivers. I find it strange that they were understaffed. Isn't this the time of year drivers should be returning to work. It will become a huge problem for me next week if the bus is consistently late when I have to race home with my six year old and get him to his school on time

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Every year the union holds the parents and their kids hostage to their demands. They also know that their trump card is that the only other option is to put thousands of kids on the T placing kids and passengers at risk

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That's right, keep on voting for whichever candidate plants the biggest kiss on the ass of the unions! Then act surprised on days like this. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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for Uber and Lyft: UberBus and SchooLyft.

Punch in your stop location and destination school, and Uber will aggregate the data to calculate how many kids in one school have been completely abandoned by the actual bus company, and send an UberBus to run their route.

Punch in on Lyft that your school bus has left you high and dry, and Lyft will send you a minivan wearing a bright yellow mustache. Kids, it's OK to get into a strangers van if you arrange it on the internet!

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There's an awful lot of anti-union sentiment in this comment section. Are you folks familiar with Veolia? Who has been taking over municipal operations and busting unions for the last decade? Why provide workers with decent pay and benefits when you can just hire Veolia and screw them over!

I don't necessarily agree with the way the bus drivers are dealing with this, but Veolia is not a company that cares in any way about the people it employs.

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Yes isn't it odd that the other labor issue in the news isn't viewed with the same hostility. Bad management doesn't discriminate !

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Not disagreeing on Veolia as a general matter. That having been said, the bus drivers union also does not have a great track record either that goes back before Veolia ever got this contract, so that has to be taken into account. When First Student had the contract in 2004-5, the union opposed GPS on buses and accused city councilors of being racist and segregationists along with Big Brother for proposing them in the wake of numerous buses being late coming from BPS sporting events.

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Can someone please show me an example of a union doing something useful in recent history? Other than holding the public hostage to their ridiculousness.

Case in point:
http://deadline.com/2014/08/padma-lakshmi-boston-teamsters-attack-top-ch...

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