Halifax parents scramble for school bus information on eve of return to classes

Some parents in the Halifax area say they don't know what time the school bus is coming to pick up or drop off their children Wednesday morning — the first day of school — because of problems with a new online scheduling system.

Michelle Stewart has children in grades 2 and 4 at Chebucto Heights Elementary. They live far enough away from the school to be eligible to ride the bus, but when Stewart checked the schedule on the BusPlanner system, she said it only gave walking directions.

"It's extremely stressful," said Stewart. 

"I'm a stay-at-home mom but I also have a day job where I work from home. I still have to do everything I need to do. I also have an older child in junior high I have to get ready and out the door for school."

I'm not the only one whose trying to find out information.- Michelle Stewart, parent

Stewart said she tried calling Stock Transportation, which operates buses for Halifax's public schools, but did not get through. She's also heard from neighbours in the same situation.

"Obviously I'm not the only one who's trying to find out information," said Stewart, who plans to show up at last year's bus stop Wednesday at 8:20 a.m. along with other confused parents.

Parent Nicole Ransom said Tuesday she could see when and where the bus will drop off her son, a Grade 6 student at John W. MacLeod, but there was no information on the pickup time or location in the morning.

Ransom said she's been trying to straighten out the bus issue since the middle of last month. On Wednesday morning, like Stewart and the others, she will wait and see if a bus comes to pick up her child.

"That's all I can do," she said. "This is very stressful for me because I have to work and then I'm late for work or I have to take time off."

Stock Transportation needs matching data

The regional manager for Stock said all routes have been completed for eligible students and courtesy seating but data entry problems are affecting two per cent of its bus scheduling system.

Crystal Truax said the trouble is that information in PowerSchool — an online parent-student portal — is not lining up with information on BusPlanner.

"We are finding a lot of errors where parents have not updated their addresses, they've since moved. We have situations where we don't have accurate phone numbers and so this is causing a little bit of a delay," Truax said.

'Overwhelming' traffic affected website 

Truax said an "overwhelming amount of parents" logged into BusPlanner for the first time Tuesday and that led to the website not loading properly and giving only partial information.

She said the site was working again as of 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

"We've implemented BusPlanner because we do believe fully that it's going to help us with better communication this year, it's going to ensure parents are notified in the event of any delays and cancellations," Truax said.

Families emailed bus routes

Families who are having difficulty accessing their routes have been emailed with bus stop locations in their area, Truax said.

"And we will ask them to bring their child there for the first few days until they can get their data updated in PowerSchool and we can get them properly assigned to a route," Truax said.

Truax said families need to review student data entered on PowerSchool and make sure it's up to date and accurate.