ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Billed as a modernized system for transporting students, Howard County’s new school bus operation failed to operate stranding students and parents, alike, and Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano has a message for both.
“I apologize from the bottom of my heart for the inconvenience and the challenges and the diminishment of excitement on the first day of school,” said Martirano.
While saying he’s sorry, Martirano is pointing the finger of blame in several directions, but primarily at less than two dozen bus drivers.
An out-of-state company called Zum Transportation with 250 buses on a single lot in Jessup had trouble distributing keys and getting buses on the road, and missing drivers made a bad situation worse.
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“Another human issue that I can’t always control is that 20 bus drivers did not show up,” said Martirano.
20 drivers who decided the job wasn’t worth it, prompting the superintendent to suspend 20 routes, leaving it up to the parents to transport 2,400 children.
“They’ve been canceled for the rest of the week,” Jessica Reeder of Columbia told us upon hearing the news, “So I don’t drive, so now I have to figure out a way to get them to school every day.”
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Martirano says he’s meeting with Zum’s CEO next week and the company is now offering a monthly $500 bonus to drivers with no absences, but restoring the stalled routes will ride on finding replacement drivers and waiting until they can be certified.
“The 20 that I had to suspend the routes on? I don’t have drivers for them,” said Martirano.
The superintendent says countywide operations have improved each day, yet even today, one out of every four buses ran late.
