WASHINGTON — School Bus Operators and attendants with Office of the Superintendent of Education (OSSE) rallied on Tuesday against the use of contractors.
Bus drivers from all over the District gathered Tuesday morning at Anacostia Park to make their voices heard on several issues plaguing the school bus system. The most common issue multiple bus drivers complained about was OSSE's usage of contractors to "replace" D.C. Government employees on their routes.
"It seems like they are not in sync and on the same page in reference to routing and scheduling," OSSE school bus driver Kevin Simon told WUSA9.
Simon says the routes are chaotic and have been that way for the last four years. He says currently, the school bus routes will come down and then at the last minute it'll be changed, causing confusion among the drivers.
Simon said the previous protocol was that once a driver received their route, that was their route for the entire school year, but that hasn't been the case in years.
"Now you get something one day, the next the day they snatch it away from you. Then we find out it's been given to a contractor, why? I'm a D.C. Government employee...they hired us to do the job, the ones that's here let us do our job," Simon said.
On the other side of the parking lot, Michael Riley, Director of Student Transportation, told WUSA9 that while he hears the complaints, there are some issues the OSSE has been faced with that they have to fix.
"More students and families that need our services, and we have an absenteeism rate. We're looking at about 25% of folks not showing up per day," Riley said. "So what we've done in order to combat that is to increase our vendor capacity, which we've done for the last three years in order to meet the demands for students and families."
Riley said the only way to resolve this ongoing issue with the drivers is to meet with them individually, listen to their concerns, empathize with their struggle, and come up with solutions that work for everyone involved.
Cameo Cooper, a bus attendant with OSSE had a laundry list of concerns that she feels needs to be addressed.
"Every time we ask for something that would better the program, there's never any money in the budget. We're offered incentives and we don't see them paid out for months. We can't take off to care for our own families because we're never staffed, we're always understaffed. The buses don't have AC, don't have heat, but they want us to transport special needs children," Cooper told us Tuesday.
In a statement from OSSE, they said:
"Our top priority has always been ensuring that the more than 3,800 children we transport each year get to school safely and on time. And, to be clear, no OSSE-DOT employee lost or will lose a job because OSSE-DOT uses contractors to fill routes – we need all our drivers and attendants to fulfill our mission and we greatly appreciate the work they do every day. So much, in fact, at the start of the school year, every OSSE DOT employee was awarded $200 as a show of appreciation. OSSE is committed to open communication and is more than willing to engage in conversations with the DOT team to address their concerns."
This is an ongoing issue and we will continue to keep you updated as it progresses.