First day busing ‘a disaster’ at Sullivan West

By TOM KANE

	TRR photo by Tom Kane Buses await students outside the new Sullivan West High School in Lake Huntington. (Click for larger image)

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — It all depended on what bus your kid was on. If he or she was on one of 12 buses that had serious problems finding students, then you were piping mad. If your student was on one of the 25 non-problem buses, you were happy.

Sullivan West officials—mostly Superintendent Michael Johndrow—were vilified by a group of irate parents at the school board meeting on September 4, the day after opening day.

Their complaints centered mainly around the amount of time their children had to spend on the bus, going to and coming from school on the first day.

By the second day, things were a bit better, but not enough so for the parents.

Most of the problems were in the elementary and middle school grades.

Buses to the newly opened high school did relatively well.

The district, which has set a goal of no trip longer than one hour in duration for any student, has contracted with a new bus company, First Student, a company which operates nationwide.

“My child is five years old and he had to spend two and a half hours on the bus coming home,” one parent said at the board meeting.

“The routes were all screwed up,” said another irate parent. “My child’s bus never came.”

“We can’t blame First Student for the routing problems,” Johndrow said. “Routing was the school’s responsibility.”

To make matters worse, some roads up in the northern part of the district were washed out by the heavy rain the night before.

“Yesterday was a disaster,” Johndrow said.

“Today wasn’t much better,” a parent said.

One of the problems was that some of the new drivers never made a dry run of their bus route three days before.

“They were supposed to,” Johndrow said. “I don’t know why they didn’t.”

Another big problem was that about 50 to 75 students’ addresses were post office boxes and not numbers on a road.

“We didn’t realize this until three days ago,” Johndrow said. “We tried to phone the parents to get the road address but we weren’t successful.

“We got to most of them,” assistant superintendent Charlotte Gregory said.

“A clerk in the office, who has since quit, didn’t get all the road addresses, and we didn’t notice it until last week,” said bus coordinator Les Krum.

All complaining parents were given a chance to correct the problems an hour into the board meeting, by meeting in the school cafeteria with officials of First Student and the district coordinators of busing .

“We promise to have this solved right away,” Johndrow said.

John Ruggero, a parent, said he noticed buses with students standing in the aisle.

“That’s against the law,” he said.

“A lot of the problems were solved by the veteran bus driver who know the children,” Johndrow said.

The situation on the first day was unique with a new bus company and new drivers, he said.

“We had a great deal going against us,” Johndrow said.