While many families have been enjoying a restful vacation week, CPS staff have been busy coping with the impact of winter weather on our schools and transportation system. We’re looking forward to welcoming your children back to school on Monday morning.
The tremendous volume of snowfall over the past three weeks has created a considerable challenge for CPS Transportation Services. Until the ice and snow have been significantly diminished, delays to bus service should be expected on all routes.
We have tested all routes and will dispatch additional buses when possible, to reduce the number and length of delays. However, it may be weeks before school routines can return to normal.
A number of families have contacted us with questions or concerns about providing accurate and timely information about bus delays. While we will do our best to use Twitter to keep families informed, it's an imperfect system. I hope it will provide some comfort to know that we have purchased a GPS system with an online interface that will allow families to track buses and confirm that their individual child is on the correct bus. We expect this will increase the safety of our system and provide far greater convenience to CPS families. I wish it could help us now, but the new system will be launched within the next 6-8 months.
In the meantime, our small Transportation office may not be able to Tweet all delays with 100% accuracy when the phone lines are busy or individual bus drivers and monitors are unable to notify us that the delay occurred. It is particularly challenging to issue updates during the morning bus runs when there are no monitors on the bus. We will do our best, but appreciate your understanding.
It may be several more weeks before Cambridge can thaw out from the worst Winter in recent memory. Please join me in thanking all of our maintenance, custodial, and transportation staff for working hard over the February vacation to be sure that our school buildings and bus routes would be ready for your children's return to school. Thank you as well to the Cambridge Public Works Department for their around-the-clock snow removal efforts.
As always, your children's safety is our highest priority, and we will do our best to keep you informed of changes as they occur.
Jim Maloney, Chief Operating Officer
Cambridge Public Schools