Improvements Promised : Snafus With School Buses Continue, S.D. Board Told

Promising improved “checks and balances” to prevent further problems with the San Diego city schools’ computerized bus-routing system, Supt. Thomas Payzant said Tuesday that he would present the Board of Education with modifications in the $1.1-million program next month.

But even as Payzant was accepting blame for past errors, two city residents told the school board that the bus system still does not work.

Ruth Cummins said her grandson waited 90 minutes outside Point Loma High School for a bus that never came, the third time recently that he was the victim of a snafu with the buses.

“Some of you have intimated that the problem is over. It’s not over. It happened to us yesterday,” she said.

Kathy Cline told the board that in recent days her daughter’s school bus failed to show on three occasions and was late on two others. “We have times where she goes a week at a time without a bus showing up,” Cline said.

Board members, meeting for the first time since a school system study committee recommended that the error-plagued system be scrapped, heard Payzant say that he was responsible for routing errors that left thousands of children stranded waiting for buses and late for classes this fall.

“I think it’s incumbent (on) people in positions of leadership to acknowledge when they are not so successful,” Payzant said. “And this is one of those times.”

In a strongly worded and candid review of the bus-routing system released last week, a school district study team said that the new system failed because of “blind faith in technology,” administrative turf wars, poor communication and a lack of leadership.

The team recommended that the computerized system designed by Ecotran Systems Inc. of Cleveland be scrapped in favor of the old manual system, which uses color-coded pins and yarn on school district maps to design bus routes.

The study team said the computerized system should be tried as a small-scale pilot program to determine if it can handle the task of organizing bus routes for the 22,000 city schoolchildren transported each day.

Board member Kay Davis was the harshest critic of the system Tuesday, saying that repeated snafus had cost the school system the confidence of children who ride the buses. “I think the frustration is how we can have so many smart people, and spend so much money, and spend so many years, and still make such a royal screw-up,” she said.

But board member John Witt called the problems “growing pains,” and said administrators should not “throw out the baby with the bath water.”

Payzant again said he would not use the results of the study to discipline staff members involved in the project. “Based on my review of the study at this point, I don’t think it’s possible to target an individual and place a greater portion of the blame on their shoulders,” he said in response to questions from Davis.

In other action, the school board agreed to open four magnet programs at city schools next fall. Included in the package was a proposal to overhaul curriculum at Lincoln High School in Southeast San Diego, which has been plagued by low test scores and high dropout rates.

School administrators originally proposed to turn Lincoln into an “Academy of Language and Classical Studies” with an emphasis on the study of the “classical foundation of Western culture.” But, under pressure from black parents who said the new curriculum was inappropriate for their children, administrators dropped that plan in favor of a broad humanities program that focuses on African, Asian and Western cultures. Board President Larry Lester cast the only “no” vote on the magnet programs.

The board also accepted a report calling for a new high school, a new middle school and at least three elementary schools in the Mira Mesa and Scripps Ranch areas, to relieve current and expected overcrowding.

No decision on whether to build the schools, which would cost an estimated $51 million, will be made until the district completes a citywide evaluation of its needs for new schools in the fall.