Schools

Westway Officials Face Angry District 68 Board, Parents

The bus company has yet to provide a day of service in which students were not left standing at a bus stop without a ride.

Westway didn’t try to make excuses Monday night for why hundreds of students in Downers Grove Grade District 58, and had experienced poor bus service for the past four school days.

Officials didn’t provide many answers, either.

Monday's service proved perhaps the worst yet, as Westway drivers had trouble navigating new routes handed to them Sunday. Drivers were lost, missed pick-ups and were late in arriving to take students home.

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One parent commented that a bus from finally dropped kids off at 5 p.m. -- two hours after school had ended.

While district officials said every student who relies on school transportation had been affected by the poor service, students at Goodrich, and were those said to have suffered the most.

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Westway is a subsidiary of the Cook-Illinois Corporation, which serves more than 200 school districts. John Benish, Jr., president of the Cook-Illinois Corporation and Tom O'Sullivan, vice president of operations, addressed the District 68 board and then listened as about a dozen parents did the same.

Bus routes were not created on time or were incorrect

Westway staff did not have the routes done on time, and the "vast majority" of those that were done were incorrect, Benish told the board. 

Those errors generated incorrect bus routes. Stops were left off and timing differed between what was given to families and what was given to drivers. Some routes have proved impossible, with 13 stops to be made in a six-minute drive.

At some point, according to Benish, routing information the districts gave to Westway was processed incorrectly. The fault was not on the districts; it was on Westway, he said.

There are still "quite a bit of routes that are still not right," Benish said.

He could not say when the errors occurred or how many people committed them. The errors were discovered sometimes last week.

"We obviously have so many problems right now, it's hard to go through what happened," Benish said. 

Putting together a specific timeline for the district is a good idea, Benish said. He said that would be done immediately.

Lost drivers

In addition to incorrect routes, drivers have also had trouble finding pick-up and drop-off locations and even schools.

One parent told the board her daughter and several other students witnessed a bus driver trying to get to by taking I-355 from Hobson Road.

Westway tried to correct routes over the weekend and provided drivers with new routes for Monday. But that seemed to make things worse; not better. Drivers had little time to practice.

"This is not even close to corrected," Benish said. "Today was probably worse than it was last week. I don't blame you for your anger. I'm personally responsible myself."

Bus performance should improve as drivers get more comfortable in those routes, Benish said. Westway has their information correct now, he said.

But the board shared concerns about Westway's ability to retain drivers. Benish spoke of drivers quitting in frustration and the need for Cook-Illinois to bring some of its drivers to the Westway routes. The board said it received different numbers from Benish as to how many drivers the company employed.

A surprise for the board: changes made to route timing

Westway then presented a fresh challenge in the middle of apologizing for its past deficiencies. Benish told the board routes had been changed over the weekend and given to the drivers to be used Tuesday morning.

"Last week we had it completely wrong with what your children had been told," Benish said. "We worked this weekend to fix that."

In pursuant to the changes, some students now have a later or earlier bus time. No district officials had looked over the routes. No parents knew of the changes.

The announcement immediately sparked concern. How would people know for Tuesday? Which routes were affected? How much were bus times changed? What if a bus comes early and students miss it?

Board members asked Benish and O'Sullivan why they would change the routes without giving the district time to tell parents. The pair replied that yes, that was a poor idea, but offered nothing in terms of a solution to smooth over the miscommunication.

Wegner told the board and parents that changes would give families a time to be on the stop that was closer to the time the bus would actually come.

Following public comment from the audience, parents were encouraged to meet with Benish and O'Sullivan separately in another room to discuss specific issues.

The district 68 board pursued the rest of its entire agenda, including bringing in K-9 units to prevent drug presence in Jefferson, the district not making AYP and a review of its budget. Three hours after the meeting started, the board again broached the subject of route changes and whether or not to alert parents Monday night or Tuesday morning to adjust for them.

With only the board and this reporter in the room left around 11 p.m., the board decided not to alert parents, since no one had determined what the changes in the routes were and which would require students to be out earlier or later. Alerting parents to changes might just cause more confusion, the board decided.

Getting kids to school

Board members and parents both dismayed at the inability of schools to function normally when students were left on bus stops or on a late bus.

"Next to a good night's sleep and a good breakfast, good, safe transportation is the most important thing to a child's day at school," Ruggio said. "It can make or break a child's school day."

Woodridge officials will be out Tuesday to pick up those missed by buses. Officials from the , District 68, District 99 and the will look for kids left behind and follow bus routes to make sure they go smoothly.

Tanya Hughes, principal of , told parents she would drive behind one of her school's bus routes; other school officials would do the same with the other routes.

Board members then discussed fines and other ways to recoup expenses, including those spent on district officials following routes and taking kids to school.

While the district has the option to terminate the bus contract, the next problem would be where to find drivers for the contract with a new company. Switching bus companies in the short term was not a viable option, the board agreed.

Wegner said the district needed to see a dramatic improvement Tuesday in the quality of bus service. He believed it could happen now that Westway had the correct routing information.

"I have confidence in this company," Wegner said. "If they do routing correctly, once we distribute the right times to our parents and drivers learn the right routes, we might be a day or so away from (better service)."


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