New app was supposed to revolutionize school busing in Boston, but it made it worse and now councilors, parents want answers

Boston City Councilors ordered up a hearing today at which to press Boston school officials to explain how the new BPS Zum (pronounced "zoom," but for obvious reasons not spelled that way) app that was supposed to make BPS buses run as softly as a cloud instead led to some buses not showing up in the morning for an hour or more - and some kids riding buses home for up to three hours as their poor, befuddled drivers tried to navigate Boston's dropped-bowl-of-spaghetti roads.

Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown), said he was leaving a meeting - having nothing to do with the buses - at the Quincy School in Chinatown at 7 p.m. on Monday when he ran into a woman from Roxbury who'd just gotten out of an Uber because her child was still at the school, waiting for a bus that never came after school let out at 4 p.m. He said he heard from one parent whose child was two hours late getting from Dorchester to South Boston - and that at the end, the child had to give directions to the bus driver.

Flynn cited a Globe report that only 34% of buses were on time on the first day of school last week - down from 61% last year and the worst on-time performance in nearly a decade.

"We cannot accept this is just what normally happens" at the start of the school year, he said. Councilors said it was particularly critical to get it right this year, because it's the third and final year of a state-mandated improvement cycle after which state education officials say they will consider whether to take control of Boston schools - and that one of the criteria is simply getting kids to school on time.

Councilor Erin Murphy (at large) said she's heard from several parent who were still waiting for their kids at 7:30 p.m. Councilor Julia Mejia (at large) said she's dipped into her own money to reimburse parents forced to retrieve their kids by Uber.

Councilor Enrique Pepén (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan), who cited his own BPS horror reports - such as an hour-ride bus trip from the Channing School to River Street in Mattapan, about two miles away - said he visited the BPS transportation department this week - and the home of a BPS bus driver - and said the one brief, flickering light is that after 50 years of using paper maps, in more recent years, printed out via the old Mapquest site, BPS has finally committed to a "state of the art new app."

The problem, he said, is that drivers are still getting used to the Zum system, which is supposed to give them better guidance on their routes - and let parents track the position of the buses and their kids. BPS should have done more training before school started, both with parents and especially drivers, not just on the general use of the app, but on the specific routes the drivers would be taking, he said.

BPS, he said, "is supposed to be the best public-school system in the country" and he said he's confident BPS and drivers can work it out, eventually, even if they should have had it right on the first day.

"Our parents deserve, this, our families deserve this, our schools deserve this," he said.

One parent with a young child at the Ohrenberger School in West Roxbury described the first three days of school, in e-mail to Universal Hub:

The first day of school, the bus driver asked my daughter if she was Lucas and couldn’t tell me what school he was going to. According to the new app Zum, he drove in circles, even entering Brookline at one point.

And today was the 3rd afternoon where my child’s bus just didn’t show up on the app or at school. Parents are stressed, poor Principals are staying late with stranded kids.

How is that okay? No acknowledgement from BPS, Transportation, the Mayor…