Exhausted parents complain about the frequent cancellations of the school bus service, so that their children miss school two or three times a week or have to fend for themselves.
• Also read: ‘Too young’, a 10-year-old boy is denied access to a bus by the driver
“It doesn’t make sense anymore. When they were being transported to school, I said to them: They are screwing up our lives,” testifies Pierre-Philippe Martin.
Her two boys, aged 12 and 14, are said to take the yellow bus every day to get to their high school, L’Assomption and Repentigny.
But in fact, school transport is so unreliable that they also have an OPUS public transport system card in case there is a problem.
Photo Dominique Scali
William Martin, 12, with his Opus card
On average, twice a week, Mr. Martin receives a text message a few hours in advance that one of his sons’ trips have been canceled or are delayed. It happened three times in the week of November 21st.
“We hope”
“We always hope that the bus will come,” sums up Nicolas Martin, 14 years old.
The reason for all these service disruptions: the lack of bus drivers, which means that they are difficult to replace in case of illness (see further text below).
A little everywhere in Quebec, school transportation is precarious, according to spokespersons for two parent associations who were interviewed. However, some regions are more affected than others, such as Lanaudière, the Laurentians and Estrie.
Having been present for about a year, the problem would have gotten worse this fall. At the Center de services scolaire (CSS) in the Sherbrooke region, for example, there were 16 service disruptions in November… and just one in October, explains General Secretary Donald Landry.
A week at home
Lucie Duguay doesn’t have a car. She received an email saying there would be no school bus passing near her home in Saint-Lin-Laurentides this week to take her daughter to her secondary school in Sainte-Julienne.
Her 13-year-old daughter will therefore spend the week at home. “It is certain that it will harm him [dans sa réussite]sighs Mrs. Duguay.
For her part, last week Julie Bonami’s daughter missed two days of school because there was no public transport between Prévost and Saint-Jérôme.
Photo provided and taken by Julie Bonami
Julia Bonami
Not all parents have the freedom to change their work schedule at the last minute to drive their kids to school.
Pierre-Philippe Martin is an emergency responder in Montreal. Lucie Duguay works in a supermarket. Julie Bonami has her own daycare that opens at 6:30am.
“When I close my day care center in the morning, there are six parents who can’t go to work either,” Ms. Bonami illustrates.
They tried everything to recruit drivers
The shortage of school bus drivers is worse than ever, despite advertisements, bonuses and other recruitment drives by the transportation companies.
“Despite our best efforts, things are not getting better,” admits Éric Ladouceur, Coordinator of the General Secretariat of the CSS des Affluents in Lanaudière.
The CSS may well impose penalties on carriers for service outages, but that doesn’t change anything.
At Transco, which serves the Martin family in Repentigny, it is explained that it is pursuing strategies to attract and retain drivers to no avail.
“We offer rewards of up to $2,000 for applications,” says Laurie Henner of Transco.
Even a driving school has been set up to train new drivers quickly. The company also recruits foreign workers, as her field is now considered a labor shortage, she explains.
“I had never heard of that, advertisements on the radio to recruit drivers. Now it’s almost every hour,” says Donald Landry of the CSS de la Région-de-Sherbrooke.
Not attractive
“The job is absolutely unattractive,” explains Josée Dubé, union representative at CSN and a driver herself.
“You get up at dawn and you’re done around 6 p.m.,” estimates Ms. Dubé, with a salary of around 25 hours a week.
“You have to drive disciplined […]. We settle conflicts, we separate battles, we create bandages,” illustrates the student, who has 72 elementary school students on her own bus, including a dozen with behavioral problems.
Not resolved
School bus drivers are part of one of those rare jobs where you work for the education network and get paid by the private sector. An agreement was reached between the government and the Bus Carriers Federation last August.
“But it’s not clear at all,” summarizes Ms. Dubé. She explains that each CSS will then have to negotiate each route with each carrier and that the sums topped up by Quebec are not yet in the drivers’ pockets.
“I genuinely feel a disinterest in the work,” she states.
“No one does anything”
Like many parents, Julie Bonami is tired of being told there’s nothing you can do about it.
“Stop saying it’s the carrier’s fault […]. Do something, offer distance learning,” she suggested to her daughter’s principal.
“If my daughter goes down, it’s your fault,” Ms. Bonami assures.
For its part, the CSS de la Rivière-du-Nord points out that the decree allowing schools to offer distance learning in the context of a pandemic is no longer in force.
The Bus Carriers Federation did not respond to our request. At the time of publication, the CSS des Samares serving Sainte-Julienne was unavailable.
Do you have any information about this story that you would like to share with us?
Do you have a scoop that might be of interest to our readers?