Howard County public school's transportation troubles continued Tuesday, and the school system said it was Zum Transportation that was the source of many of the issues.
We spoke to Zum's co-founder and COO back in June, after the announcement of a five year transportation contract with HCPSS.
"We are in total hiring 250 school bus drivers," said Vivek Garg, noting that they'd hit the halfway mark by June 6.
That total included both trainees and licensed candidates.
"They may not have a commercial license or they may have a commercial license," said Garg in June adding, "We actually invite them to come here and train with us to become school bus drivers."
In a statement released to parents last night, HCPSS said "While the contractor currently has drivers in the training pipeline and is working to address the vacancies, they are asking families who are served by the following routes to make alternative arrangements for your students to get to and from school for the remainder of the week."
In a news release in June, the company stated three expectations the community could have of its services. Cleaner and greener school bus rides; high-quality, safe, and reliable experience; and well-trained school bus drivers and staff.
"Starting from the coming school year, parents will be able to track every single bus on their app and they will know where their child is at any given time, when they are being transported by Zum. Similarly, [the] school district will know at all time[s] where all the buses are and if any buses [are] running late or there's anything.. going on with the transportation on that particular day," Garg told WMAR-2 News in June. "So, there's a lot of data that we provide and a lot of visibility and transparency that we provide to the community around the school bus system."
Yet, 20 bus routes are not covered for the rest of this week due to drivers calling out and not enough trained drivers to fill in.
Parents have been asked to find alternate methods of transportation for their kids.
