School bus stops far from home, long rides frustrate Nova Scotia families

Shirley Munroe plans to accompany her daughter to a bus stop near their Sheet Harbour, N.S., home Monday in hopes the Grade 6 student can get a ride to school.

Munroe said she knew the location of her daughter's stop was changing but it wasn't until school began that she discovered theassigned stop was 12 kilometres away. There are two other stopswithin a short walk of their home, she said.

Munroe estimates walking to the assigned stop in Port Dufferin would take the child several hours.

"For her to catch the bus where her bus stop is, she has to walk right by the school, technically," she said Saturday.

"I refuse to drive by the school to take her to catch a bus."

On Friday night, the Halifax Regional Centre for Education and Stock Transportation issued a joint statement apologizing "for the frustration [this week's] routing issues have caused."

Stock will have additional staff responding to calls and the Halifax education centre has also made changes to ensure parents are called back and students' information is updated.

Education MinisterZach Churchill also announced Thursday there would be an internal review of the province's school bus system after numerous complaints from parents.

Extra staff working on schedules

No one from Stock Transportation was available for an interview Saturday.

However, the company said in the statement it has additional routing experts working over the weekend to "help re-route as student data is updated." The company didn't offer details such ashow many additional people are working on the problem.

Stock also had extra staffworking over the Labour Day weekend in an attempt to clear up confusion over the new BusPlannersubscription program, which launched in July.

Troy DeVenne, who lives in Enfield, said bus transportation problems should have been resolved long before the school year started.

He said on the day before classes resumed, he was concerned to see his children's commute to Lockview High School increase to more than an hour, which goes against the school's policy.

"On my BusPlanner, the scheduled drive time was 98 minutes," he said. "I'm retired military. I was an operations manager. If I'm told I have one hour to do something and my scheduler comes out at 98 minutes, I think I'd re-look at that."

DeVenne said when he tried calling Stock Transportation this week it appeared the line wasn't availableand the education's centre's switchboard sent him through to a voicemail.

After calling Churchill's office, he said he heardfrom from Elwin LeRoux, the regional executive director of education, followed by asecond person from the education centre who said officials were looking into numerous similar complaints.

DeVennesaid on Friday afternoon,the online portal showed changes to the scheduled route. However,the bus still took the longer route, he said.

"If I hadn't picked up the phone and called the minister of education, I don't think I would've gotten anywhere," DeVenne said, adding he still hasn't heard from anyone at Stock.

Repeated calls for weeks

Like DeVenne, Munroe is waiting to see what happensMonday.

"I had called all summer, off and on, about three times a week or more," she said. "I plan to keep calling until I get ahold of somebody to see if they've figured it out."

Munroe drove her daughter to school for the first few days of school, but that isn'tpossible for the rest of the school year.

"When it first happened and I was working night shift ... it was very frustrating. You don't know where your daughter is getting off and on the bus," she said, adding her daughter has been very anxious as well.

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