The first Prince George’s County Public Schools board meeting of the year was dominated by school bus woes that left thousands of students stranded and sparked calls for an audit of the $3.2 million contract for the bus routing and tracking software the district is using and is at the heart of complaints from parents and drivers.
Frustrated parents and exhausted bus drivers filled the Thursday evening meeting demanding accountability for a transportation rollout marred by system outages, bus routes described as impossible, and understaffing. While the board introduced a motion to initiate a comprehensive audit and potentially revoke the district’s contract with the Chipmunk transportation app, several board members and parents stressed that the transportation department has some longstanding infrastructure and operational failures.
Superintendent Dr. Shawn Joseph apologized to families and said he took full personal responsibility. During the meeting, he outlined plans to reduce the backlog of students unassigned to a bus route and increase staffing capacity by Saturday, though he said that doesn’t mean everything will be resolved by then.
The bus debacle consumed the evening so thoroughly that the board was forced to punt a scheduled presentation on state MCAP test scores to a future meeting.
The room’s palpable frustration peaked when an unnamed representative from BusPlanner, Chipmunks’ parent company, took to the podium. Facing an agitated crowd of drivers, some of whom had been on the road since 5 a.m. and had come to the meeting fresh off their after-school route, the representative repeatedly apologized for the app’s Tuesday crash. He said the company only accounted for estimated subscribers and “missed the mark on testing for the entire population” of potential bus riders.
The audience erupted into cheers when Board Chair Branndon Jackson demanded financial restitution.
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“Prince George’s County deserves a refund,” Jackson said. “For failure to execute.”
The BusPlanner representative told the board he could not address that matter.
Board member Phelton Moss, who introduced the audit motion, laid into the representative.
“I have no more confidence in this than I did when you started,” Moss said.
He questioned how the vendor could launch an app without stress testing it for the district’s 80,000 potential riders.
BusPlanner was contracted to build a route system to get students to and from school efficiently, while giving parents and guardians an app to check bus assignments and track their students’ buses in real time.
The proposed audit demands a review of the vendor’s technical compliance, financial oversight and operational impact within 30 days, while it would “withhold any non-essential supplemental payments.” However, Deana Thorps, PGCPS’s internal audit director, said that a 30-day turnaround was not feasible due to capacity.
While Board Member Aimee Olivo echoed the disappointment over the app’s failure, she said that Chipmunk should not be the sole scapegoat. She laid out a list of operational breakdowns, including inadequate staffing, insufficient training and lack of communication with drivers navigating “insane routes” on the ground.
Ed Ewing, who drives students with disabilities, said his bus is equipped to hold three wheelchairs, but his route has assigned him six students who use wheelchairs, forcing him to make double runs that leave some students nearly an hour late for school. He also said his bus run sheets currently lack parent contact information.
“I’ve been out of my house since 5:30 this morning,” Ewing said. “I didn’t even see my kids today because I’m here trying to figure out what’s going on, both as a driver and as a parent. My son didn’t have a route, and it pretty much came down to me saying if he doesn’t have a bus route to be picked up to go to school, I can’t come to work on the first day of school.”
Joseph Hardy, a 16-year PGCPS driver handling routes for homeless students, called this the worst start to a school year he has ever seen. He believes that upper management has not been transparent about the true number of staff vacancies. He’s not alone in this suspicion. Other drivers also said they think the number of vacancies is higher than what is being publicly shared.
“We are not asking for the farm,” Hardy said. “We’re just asking for support.”
For parents, this breakdown is what they describe as a familiar pattern. Theresa Smith outlined a decade-long saga of district transportation failures involving her children, ranging from wrong drop-offs to being entirely forgotten at bus stops.
“I maintain decorum tonight,” Smith told the board, “but behind this podium is an upset parent who has lost complete faith in the department of transportation. I don’t think you can restore it.”
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