Hamden students late for school amid bus delays, paving projects

Some students in Hamden Public Schools are still routinely late for class more than two weeks into the 2023 academic year amid a combination of problems with the district’s transportation company, a redesigned bussing schedule and a town-wide repaving project.

Hamden parents took to social media in the opening weeks of the school year to complain about numerous issues they were experiencing with their children’s school buses: delayed pick-ups, late drop-offs and sometimes no buses altogether.

“My son is in elementary school and hasn’t got picked up for school at all,” Hamden parent Lilliana Rosario said in an Aug. 30 post to the Hamden Crime Watchers Facebook page. “He missed two days.”

Parents on the page described instances in which their children were picked up after the school day had already started. Others mentioned repeatedly contacting the Hamden school system’s bus company, First Student, to no avail.

“My daughter is missing class and I am having to go in late to work daily,” another parent, Karen Jeanette, said. “Myself and other parents have reached out. (We) keep getting the ‘we will look into it.’”

The Hamden school system first entered a partnership with First Student more than a decade ago. And prior to the start of the 2023-24 academic year, the town utilized a four-tier bussing system to transport students to school — the high school operated on one schedule, the middle school operated on another and the town’s elementary schools operated on two additional schedules.

However, the Hamden Board of Education voted last year to restructure the town’s school bus system under a three-tier system.

Melissa Kaplan, chair of the Hamden Board of Education and a parent of two kids in the Hamden school system, said district officials did not consolidate the bus schedule for financial reasons but rather for streamlining and efficiency purposes.

“It turned out to be a very inefficient system,” Kaplan said of the district’s previous four-tier bus schedule. “And it wasn’t that we moved it to a three-tier system for any kind of cost savings, but rather, it was about better supporting our teachers for professional development in the elementary schools and making sure that it was on a unified schedule.”

Kaplan said the board of education — which coordinated directly with First Student officials over the summer to design a new bus schedule — used the transportation company’s recommendations to designate school start times and, accordingly, the district’s bus schedules. 

The consolidated bus schedule, Kaplan said, was not independently responsible for the issues Hamden families have experienced in the opening weeks of the school year.

“It really is more of an issue with the bus company,” Kaplan said. “It was a result of First Student not adequately training their drivers on the routes.”

Representatives from First Student did not respond to HQNN’s multiple requests for comment.

Kaplan said Hamden education officials were “furious” about the situation, going so far as to threaten to not pay First Student until the company resolved the town’s bussing issues.

“This has gone well beyond the local First Student,” Kaplan said, noting that Superintendent Gary Highsmith intended to discuss the company’s “unacceptable” service with representatives from its national headquarters. “It is the Hamden school system that is obviously at the forefront of this. But it really is working with the bus company that we are just very disappointed.”

Superintendent Gary Highsmith noted in a Sept. 8 email to the Hamden School District that district officials began planning for this year’s bus routes months prior to the start of the school year. 

The superintendent expressed confidence in First Student’s ability to deliver services, citing a “meeting with First Student, a formal presentation by First Student to the Board of Education, meetings of the transportation working group, (and) additional planning meetings with the district’s Executive Leadership Team.”

The Hamden school system has maintained contracts with First Student since at least 2010, and Kaplan said that, until recently, the company had avoided “price-gouging” the town’s education board. But, since the pandemic, she said First Student has raised its prices 17%.

“We are just at a lack of options, whether we go with First Student or another bus company,” Kaplan said. “But we have to be very budget conscious.”

The Hamden mayor’s office also issued a press release on Aug. 23 to announce a collection of parking bans amid milling and paving work. 20 of the streets affected by the roadwork — which was scheduled to affect nearly three dozen town roads in total — were slated to have been repaved by Sept. 6. However, HQNN subsequently found that not all of the roads crossed off as complete had been repaved by this time.

Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett told NBC Connecticut on Sept. 4 that First Student officials denied any connection between the bussing issues and the ongoing roadwork.

However, Al Lotto, a lifelong Hamden resident and a veteran school bus driver, argued this claim was inaccurate.

“(It) causes delays, and panics young children that have never ridden the bus before when we call in for having to detour,” he wrote in a written statement to HQNN.

Lotto said he and his drivers have put in several hours of overtime work in an effort to resolve route issues. However, since most of the bus drivers have routes for different schools, it makes these meetings take much longer.

“Our drivers are all trained and trained again … we are all professional and completely capable,” Lotto wrote. “The problems arise when computer-generated routes time (the length of the routes) between stops, and from one school to another incorrectly.”

Hamden’s ongoing election season has in some ways complicated the town’s school bus problems. Amid the bus crisis, Garrett — whose administration has been on the frontlines of the issues — faced off in a Sept. 12 Democratic primary against veteran Board of Education member Walter Morton IV. 

After beating Morton in Tuesday’s primary, Garrett is now set to face another school board member, Republican Crystal Dailey, in November’s general election.

“It’s a very political climate,” Kaplan said. “And I wish that the board wasn’t in the middle of it.”