Changing Ottawa’s school start times will help fix bus shortage: report

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The bell times at Ottawa’s English language school boards are the “primary constraint” to fixing a school bus shortage that left families scrambling last September.

Changing bell times would allow for additional bus runs, allow buses to drive longer distances and pick up more students, noted the independent review by Deloitte LLP commissioned by the Ministry of Education. The review of policies and processes at the Ottawa Students Transportation Authority (OSTA) comes after the families of 7,500 students learned that school buses were cancelled only days before school started last year.

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OSTA manages and coordinates bus transportation for students at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) and the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB). The 67-page report notes that the two boards have bell times that range from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. in the morning and from 2:10 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the afternoon.

In one scenario outlined in the report, bell times in a school zone are consolidated at 8 a.m. and 9:15 a.m., while van runs are converted to large vehicle runs because the change in bell times offers more time to pick up students. That scenario would require a large-scale consolidation of bell times and convert van routes to bus routes. It would also result in longer rides for students.

The second scenario outlined would involve resetting the bell times to three start times. That would improve the sharing of vehicles between the two school boards and maximize the use out of each vehicle, regardless of the type of vehicle. The review recommended increasing the number of routes where the two school boards share the same vehicle. As it stands, 15 per cent of all daily routes are shared by the two boards.

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But changes to bell times likely won’t be made before September 2026.

Any changes exceeding 10 minutes require school board approval, said OSTA in a statement released Wednesday. 

“Should any adjustments be considered, we will ensure that parents and guardians are consulted well in advance. Importantly, no bell time changes will be implemented in the upcoming school year.” 

The Deloitte review, released by the Ministry of Education at the Ottawa Citizen’s request, identifies a number of other strategies that would help ease the supply and demand crunch for school bus service. But none of them can be applied without first considering changes to school start and end times, said the report, which calls for a thorough review of bell times.

The review also calls for harmonizing the calendars at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the Ottawa Catholic School Board to reduce the number of days OSTA is paying for “sub-optimal vehicle capacity.” In the past school year, the two school boards each had six professional development days, but five of those were not synchronized, noted the review.

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OSTA said harmonizing school calendars also falls under the jurisdiction of the school boards. 

The Deloitte review identified other issues, including cost differentials between bus operators who provide the same service and opportunities to introduce formal processes and tighter controls when it comes to OSTA’s overall governance, such as standardized contracts, contract rate alignment to the province’s new funding model and monitoring contract performance.

OSTA is funded mostly by the school boards with the province’s student transportation grant. The funding framework was changed last September, based on student needs and distance to schools.

There is a $7 million funding gap projected for the upcoming school year — the difference between OSTA’s $82.1 million budget and the $75.1 million it gets from the province for school bus transportation. An OCDSB report to trustees released in February warned that the gap could grow to $17 million a year by 2027.

The funding gap needs to be addressed, said the Deloitte review. OSTA is providing a consistent level of service to its students, such as low ride times — but that might not be reasonable given the funding, said Deloitte.

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“Any deficit in student transportation will need to be offset by the other areas of Ontario’s Grant for Student needs. Therefore, the projected deficit will not only affect how transportation services will be delivered, it will have a direct impact on quality of education for students in the OCDSB and the OCSB.”

In the letter to OSTA dated June 6, former education minister Stephen Lecce said cancellations in Ottawa represented more than 70 per cent of the entire province.

“This was not acceptable to me or the affected parents.” said Lecce, who added that he expects OSTA and the school boards to work together and fully implement the recommendations from the report.

OSTA said it has already begun implementing many of Deloitte’s recommended changes. 

“At OSTA, our foremost commitment is to ensure that students have safe, reliable, and efficient transportation to and from school,” said OSTA’s interim general manager and chief administrative officer Cindy Owens. 

“We recognize the concerns raised by parents and guardians following last year’s challenges, and OSTA is dedicated to implementing meaningful changes to address these issues.”

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Meanwhile, OSTA announced last weekend that the general manager who started work in April had departed the organization.

Hiring and retaining drivers was one of the issues that made it difficult to get buses on the road last year.

In an update posted in mid-July, OSTA said there are 71 new yellow school bus drivers in training — or in the queue to begin training — to backfill 22 vacant positions from the end of the 2023-24 school year. Another 18 drivers are expected to begin the 2024-25 school year on leave.

However, the attrition rate can be as high as 40 per cent in new school bus driver training, and there is always a spike in driver resignations just prior to the start of the school year, according to OSTA. 

An update is to be posted in the coming days, said Owens. 

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