Seattle, WA
Questions surrounding the future of transportation at Seattle Public Schools
College buses and begin instances: Seattle Public Faculties faces transportation woes
The destiny of transportation for Washington’s largest college district is as soon as once more up within the air.
SEATTLE – There are various questions surrounding the way forward for transportation at Seattle Public Faculties (SPS) within the 2022-23 college yr.
First Scholar is the present bus vendor for SPS, and it was competing for the district’s newest contract with Zum Providers.
Zum Providers launched an announcement on Tuesday asserting it had submitted a proper bid protest to SPS:
“Zum Providers has submitted a proper bid protest difficult Seattle Public Faculties (SPS) employees’s announcement of their intent to advocate that the SPS Board of Administrators award one other 5-year pupil transportation contract to the troubled incumbent vendor, First Scholar. The protest highlights clear miscalculations within the RFP scoring course of and urges SPS employees to replace their advice to mirror Zum’s scoring benefit.”
In February, FOX 13 reported First Scholar was going through a whole lot of security violations, which have since been settled with the state.
“They’re dedicated, for causes that aren’t clear, to re-signing with a bus vendor that has an intensive file of security violations,” mentioned mother or father Mary Ellen Russell. “There are a whole lot of options to those issues, however simply staying with the identical vendor and insisting you possibly can’t make any modifications received’t repair the issues.”
Russell has additionally been the Chair of the College Visitors Security Committee which is a metropolis fee that works with SPS and King County Metro on site visitors questions of safety. Her daughter’s bus route was additionally one of many 50 that the district suspended initially of the college yr.
“[Zum] already gives service for San Francisco, Oakland and they’re taking up the service for the LA College District, the biggest college district within the nation subsequent yr. So they’re absolutely able to offering all of the transportation,” mentioned Russell. “They’ve additionally been doing a pilot venture with SPS this yr as a result of first pupil has been unable to tackle all of the routes and is especially struggling to supply service to college students with disabilities and different particular wants.”
In latest weeks, SPS households have been informed there may very well be bell time modifications beginning subsequent college yr, however in latest days SPS has determined to take a pause.
College officers have been proposing to vary the present two-tier begin instances to three-tier begin instances to deal with the nationwide bus driver scarcity. On its web site, the district mentioned by shifting to a three-tier system, it might permit drivers to choose up extra routes and scale back the variety of drivers wanted.
Nevertheless, after listening to suggestions from households, college officers mentioned they’re “slowing down the decision-making course of” to determine methods to deal with the issues that have been raised.
Andrew Cooper is a mother or father of a kindergartener and second-grader at SPS and shared testimony on the final SPS Board assembly advocating for transparency and data-driven decision-making.
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Utilizing knowledge from the State Superintendent’s Workplace and the U.S. Census Bureau, Cooper created an “SPS Begin Occasions Exploration Device” to assist households look at the affect the proposed bell modifications could have on college students.
“The issue is SPS didn’t really present us the vary of choices they checked out. Then, it could be that what they really selected was the best choice and most equitable, however we will’t see that. It simply bothers me when organizations declare to be basing choices on fairness however then don’t defend these or clarify these,” mentioned Cooper. “This provides extra group degree evaluation, so we’re not simply debating hyperbole and private opinion. That is what the census knowledge is displaying.”
College Spokesperson Tim Robinson informed FOX 13 Information final week that it was unknown if or when the difficulty could also be included in an upcoming board assembly, however the subsequent potential likelihood can be on Could 18.