None of it happened as planned: Inside the first week of school bus system breakdown

Leon County parent Marlisheyouna Lightfoot’s voice was one of a chorus of parents a week ago: Where are my children?

The bus didn’t arrive that morning for Lightfoot’s kids, but it was the first day of school — there was bound to be something that went awry. The family drove the kids the couple miles to Astoria Park Elementary 

But by 4 p.m., when Lightfoot’s kids were not home from an elementary school that lets out at 2:50 p.m., she started to panic. Her 6-year-old son needs medication for ADHD. Her daughter is prone to seizures.

From work, Lightfoot called her sister, the school, the bus compound. She drove to the compound on Appleyard Drive. Her sister went to the school.

Phone lines were busy — no one had answers.

That night, a tearful Superintendent Rocky Hanna would admit to parents in a live broadcast there weren't just a few snafus with the buses, the entire transportation system suffered "a colossal failure."

After a lashing by outraged parents at Tuesday night's school board meeting, the next day Hanna announced the removal of the district's transportation director and the abandonment of the more than $700,000 bus routing system. 

It was a disastrous end to what Hanna and others hoped would bring efficiency and state-of-the-art technology to a worn out transportation system that needed an upgrade. 

The School Board had high expectations that the new system would be able to track who got on and off the buses, and keep the vehicles running on time.

"The thing that we as a board were excited about is that we were going to be able, for the first time, to track students," School Board member and Chair Rosanne Wood said at the recent board meeting. 

"I know that's why we all bought into this originally."

High hopes for EduLog

Education Logistics, Inc., known as EduLog, partnered with LCS in 2018 to “optimize” the bus routes. The national bus-routing company specializes in aiding educational institutions by providing navigation software for drivers. EduLog also organizes routes, outfits the technology to track students while on a school bus, and helps districts communicate the changes to parents.

A relationship between LCS and EduLog dates back to May 2008, when a contract was first negotiated for GPS systems to track buses. The program shows the real-time locations of the buses on a TV at the District Security Center on West Tharpe Street.

But seeds for the first-day-of-school debacle were planted last summer.

At a May 22, 2018, School Board meeting, members unanimously passed an amendment to the district’s agreement with EduLog to add the company’s routing services and card-swipe technology to the LCS fleet. At the time, School Board Member Maggie Lewis-Butler occupied current board member Darryl Jones’s District 3 seat.

Manny Joanos, who'd recently been named acting director of transportation, spearheaded the partnership with EduLog. Joanos has worked for LCS in various capacities since 2001. For six months before his July 2018 promotion, he worked as interim director for the transportation unit.

Joanos approached district officials with a multitude of reasons for why they should partner with the company. The district was hemorrhaging bus drivers, a job that requires a specific license. Buses were wasting time crisscrossing paths on routes. LCS needed to cut expenses. 

The software the district was using at the time, AS400, was a 10-year-old GPS system that was "manual, labor intensive," Joanos told the School Board last year.

EduLog's computer-based routing system was the solution, Joanos said. 

The Montana-based IT firm would provide software and tablets for the district’s bus drivers that would read out turn-by-turn GPS directions with a map display. Each bus would be equipped with a machine where students could swipe on and off. Parents would know exactly where their kids were and could even download a cell phone app that would ping with a notification.

The cost attached to the new EduLog system was a hefty $720,707.20, according to a 2018 board agenda item. Because it was information technology, under state rules the district was not required to competitively bid the system.

“Yes, indeed, it comes with a price tag to do this,” Joanos told board members during a School Board meeting last year. “You know, however, that’s a one-time charge to get it done and move on.”

He walked board members, including the superintendent, through the cost savings, estimating a total of $1,268,000 the district could save each year. He added that the company operates in over 39 other Florida counties; there are 74 school districts in the state.

"This was a Herculean task and we pulled it together very quickly," transportation director Manny Joanos told the School Board last year about contracting for the new system. "The navigation will — guess what? — keep (the buses) on time so we don't get those calls about being late."

Budget cuts and a plan to reduce routes

In an October 2018 letter to parents, Joanos made it clear transportation changes would be put into effect "over the next several months" in advance of the new school year. More than 12,000 students ride the bus, according to the letter, but budget cuts meant the district had to consolidate stops. 

"There is not enough time in the morning nor the afternoon to accommodate all the stops that parents want us to provide," Joanos wrote. The new stops would be "no less than" four-tenths of a mile apart.

In the letter, he explained the state Legislature gave an increase of only 47-cents per student that year, and the district faced driver shortages and retention issues, fluctuations in gas prices and higher vehicle maintenance costs. 

Joanos warned parents that the district was working on a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate “ineligible (courtesy) stops.” Courtesy stops are pickups that are within 2 miles of a school. The state government does not reimburse a school district for any costs of courtesy stops, Joanos wrote. Over 1,000 students were picked up in 2017 from 6,500 stops in the courtesy limit, he cited.

EduLog would eliminate or consolidate routes to speed up travel and would use average bus travel speeds to estimate route times instead of relying on the posted speed limits. But in a document outlining EduLog's scope of work, submitted to the School Board in 2018, the company warned the district may need to adjust school start times by 5 or 10 minutes to accommodate the newer proposed routes. 

But all Leon County public school start times remained the same this year as last. 

In that same document outline, one of EduLog's tasks was to enter all the district's transportation policies into the new system — which would, among other details, identify hazardous streets and walking areas, and quantify how much time the bus rides would take.  

"Some of you will be affected,” Joanos wrote to parents in October. “However, please know that the safety of our children is paramount and there will always be an appeals committee process in place to address your concerns.”

Route data lost

Student enrollment is updated throughout the summer as schools finalize who graduates from elementary and moves to a new middle school, who leaves middle school and enters high school. The bus routing information is based on what kids attend which schools. That information is completed near the end of July, when administrators can begin to draw bus routes. 

But just days before August orientation, parents started to complain that they couldn't get answers about where to meet the buses Monday morning. 

Unbeknownst to them, days earlier on Aug. 5, administrators had noticed a glitch in the routing system. The data in the system was gone. Not yet concerned, they went searching for backup data stored throughout the summer.

But what they discovered was that an EduLog employee, hoping to create more space on the company’s servers, had deleted the LCS directory. Everything was gone.​​​​​​ Hanna briefly entertained the idea of pushing back the first day of school, but it was too late.

At Tuesday's School Board meeting, EduLog representative Pat Sarkin confessed the grim reality to frustrated members that on the first day, “I would venture to guess that every bus was delayed."

EduLog chief operating officer Sam Bull told the Democrat hours before the board meeting that the deleted data set the district’s transportation timeline back, but added, “No one thing happened.”

“There’s lots of issues that relate to school startup that got some momentum in the wrong direction,” he said.

One example — hundreds of people jumped online to register for district transportation when the system first went live, Bull said.  

“That puts stress on the system,” he added. “Routes get knocked out of whack.”

EduLog, which has been scrubbing critical social media posts about the district's woes on its Facebook Page, took the brunt of the blame, but there also were apparent missteps on the district side.

According to a 2018 document submitted to the School Board, EduLog created one scenario of bus routes ahead of time, "but it understood that the actual implementation” of the new routes required more work “not included in this assignment.”

It is unclear whether any follow up was done.

On the first day of school, bus drivers were given paper printouts of their routes rather than tablets. Joanos explained to board members Tuesday night that the district had the tablets and hardware in place to track kids but chose to implement the new system after the new school year started "one school at a time." 

What’s next?

LCS ended its agreement with EduLog for bus routing services Wednesday, but did not discontinue its relationship with the company to track buses with GPS. The district also removed Joanos from his position as transportation director and appointed transportation coordinator James Cole as interim director.

Hanna made the announcements during a news conference where he also told parents what to expect during the second week of school.

Starting Monday, LCS will: 

• Return to all previous bus stops
• Continue to describe buses by route number instead of bus number
• Have the same bus drivers on the same routes morning and afternoon
• Provide transportation to all students in the ESE program

"We look forward to a much smoother start on Monday," the district said in an email sent to parents. 

In the meantime, officials hope to re-negotiate with EduLog to recoup the nearly million dollars spent for the bus route attempt while maintaining the district’s plan to eventually track students who ride the buses. One school district official even suggested that the district could consider a lawsuit.

In the coming weeks, students may be issued some form of identification with which to swipe on and off the buses.

On that first day of school, Lightfoot's kids finally made it home hours later. 

"I got a call from my sister around 5:45 p.m. saying that the kids were home," she said. The mom was still out trying to find them. 

For Lightfoot and other parents around the district, reverting to last year’s bus stops is a relief. All four of the Astoria Park bus stops have been restored, though Lightfoot said she won’t believe it until the bus rounds the corner on time.

Leon County Schools transportation help information: 

The LCS transportation department opened a call center to help with parents looking for help with bus routes and stops. The number is (850) 487-7250. 

The district asks that if your child is a current ESE student with an existing IEP requiring transportation, and you have questions, to please call 487-7818 or email esetransportation@leonschools.net

Have a comment? Email CD Davidson-Hiers at CDavidsonH@tallahassee.com and follow her on Twitter @DavidsonHiers.