Skipped breakfasts. Curtailed social and learning time for students. Missing work hours. A lack of consistency.
Those are some of the issues that Boston Public Schools parents said they face at a hearing before the Boston City Council on Tuesday due to frequent late or no-show school buses.
“This morning, the bus was 45 minutes late… and although transportation sounds like a logistical issue, it’s a learning issue, it’s a family stability issue and it’s a school climate issue,” parent Marie Francis said during the two-hour hearing at city hall.
“When buses arrive late, or they don’t arrive at all, the students start their day already interrupted. They miss instructional time, they arrive stressed-out, they’re forced to catch up even before the day starts,” she said.
The emergency city council hearing was called in response to chronic school bus delays this year. Boston spends about $190 million annually to move 19,000 students each day via a fleet of approximately 625 buses.
Lori Murphy, a Roslindale resident and parent to two BPS students, said that she believes this year has been the worst she’s seen for late and cancelled buses. Murphy said the bus route her children take to the Rafael Hernández Dual Language K-8 School in Roxbury has recorded nearly two dozen incidents of either cancelations or significant delays this school year.
“That is a month of school,” she said. “Imagine it’s 7 a.m. and you are getting your children ready for school only to get an alert that there’s no bus and having to figure out which parent can take the burden of driving through morning traffic to get them to school… why do we have to do this? There’s a bus system in place.”
Dan Rosengard, executive director of transportation for BPS, said there have been a growing number of bus routes with no available drivers. To address the problem, his department has consolidated routes, increased driver hiring and training, and summoned regional leaders from BPS bus operator, Transdev Boston, to oversee operations.
On-time performance fell in the winter months of 2026 as historic snow storms impacted traffic across the region, Rosengard said. But as of this month, school buses have averaged 93% in the mornings and 88% in the afternoons.
“Those are historically high levels compared to where we’ve been in the past,” he said, adding that despite the improvements, “we absolutely know that the job is not complete, and this is not nearly enough.”
Parents agreed. Eugenia Rojas, another Roslindale resident, said she’s part of a contingent of families who regularly organize emergency carpools.
“We need smooth mornings to get to work, or to our day appointments and commitments.” she said. “Many times, we’re navigating who can stay behind to wait for the bus, or who can drive the kids.”
Cheryl Buckley, a South Boston resident with a child who attends Dorchester’s Ruth Batson Academy, described the state of BPS transportation as “a systemic failure” that has forced her to shell out money for rideshares to get her child to school. Her son’s father, she said, has also reported late to work because of bus failures.
“When BPS fails, the financial and professional burden falls entirely on us parents,” she said.
Several parents pointed to the option for BPS to fine Transdev, which would potentially generate more funding to handle the problems.
At one point, At-Large Councilor Erin Murphy cited the death of 5-year-old Lens Joseph, who was struck by a school bus last April. The former school bus driver responsible for transporting Joseph, who was driving with an expired state-required certification at the time of the incident, is now facing charges in connection with the child’s death.
Murphy asked why disciplinary measures were not taken with Transdev to encourage better performance.
“We always could’ve sided with our students and families and staff who stay hundreds of hours each year, but we chose to never use the tools we had to hold the school bus company accountable, even after their lack of professionalism caused us to lose our insurance, and we had to go out and find another insurance company based on their lack of professional driving which cost a child’s life,” Murphy said to Rosengard.
At-Large Councilor Julia Mejia, chair of the Boston City Council Education Committee, vowed to hold another hearing on the issue before the end of the school year to help keep track of the issue.
“My hope is that in the next three months, we can host another hearing and unpack what we’ve learned since then,” she said before adjourning the hearing.
