About 700 Houston ISD kids didn’t have their bus routes by this morning’s first day of school. A new software system gave out two sets of routes to other kids, one right, the other wrong. Air conditioning wasn’t 100 percent in all buildings so kids were moved from hot to cooler classes.
But HISD Superintendent Mike Miles was a happy man overall at his 4 p.m. news conference, saying that classes were in full instructional swing on Day 1, there were only 28 vacant teaching positions district wide — out of 10,640 — and none in the New Education System schools. And that a warm body count had tallied 180,000 students in class Monday.
“We had a great day today, a successful first day of school. Yes I’m going to get to the bus, we have some need for improvement there, but the rest of the day was a very successful day,” Miles said beginning his remarks.
“Two hundred seventy four schools with high quality instruction on Day One.” Miles proclaimed. He visited three schools, Ketelsen and Dogan elementaries and Navarro Middle School, and said he got reports from the division superintendents for their reports.
“It was as if we’d been in school at least a few weeks.”
The most concerning factor to him was transportation. Later in the day he issued a statement, saying: “Our transportation system did not provide students and families the kind of experience they expect and deserve. HISD adopted EduLog, a nationally renowned transportation platform, to provide transportation to more students, reduce ride times, and use District resources more efficiently, but clearly, we did not work out all the bugs before the first day of school. We will do better tomorrow.”
The change in routes came about as part of a consolidation devised to save money as well as have students on fewer long bus rides, Miles has said. A statement released from the HISD press office July 22 , said the number of bus routes will decrease from last year’s 508 to a projected 423 for the coming year. Doing this will save the district $3 million a year. As a result, Miles confirmed there are now more bus drivers than routes and some drivers have been told more routes may open up later in the year.
At the press conference, Miles said some kids got two different emails, he said, one with the correct route and then another with incorrect information. In some cases, a family received information for someone who was not their child.
“That’s a problem. We’re going to do better tomorrow. We know that for some families that’s a big deal to have a last minute notification with the wrong routes. That’s unacceptable. We’ll get that right.” Asked for hard numbers on how many buses were late or students were stranded, Miles said he didn’t have those numbers yet.
“We think we found the mistake. We have correct routes going out. Software was tested. Still some bgs in the entire system. He also said new corrected information was going out to families Monday afternoon. And that they’d doubled the number of people in the call center from eight to 16 for Tuesday in a better attempt to help the students eligible for bus rides in the district.
Asked if the system had been tested out earlier, Miles said it had. Asked why so many students received their bus route information over the weekend instead of earlier, Miles said some kids got their routes earlier but the fluctuating nature of the student population makes this difficult.
“You can’t give out routes too early because they will change ultimately as kids register. As kids register, that’s when you start putting routes together. There’s a balance somewhere. This happens, every year,
17,000 kids got routes. Not all of them are eligible. Not all of them will ride. Let’s just give them a route even if they’re not eligible and then worry about eligibility afterwards.”
As for the air conditioning, Miles reported that there would be reports of failed air conditioning throughout August and September and again in April and May. Students at Furr High School, for instance, had to be moved to other parts of the building because they rooms they were in were not cooling.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
