BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Public Schools next week will open their doors for the start of a new school year — and Friday, the district’s superintendent will deliver the annual state of the schools address.
2 On Your Side recently sat down with the superintendent ahead of her second year at the helm of WNY’s largest school district. She made it clear that the district is in a very different place this year than it was last year.
That’s because the teachers union has a contact and a solution to its bus driver shortage, which was keeping some students on buses for as long as 90 minutes, with its new three-tier bell system.
“Right now we're in good shape,” Superintendent Tonja Williams said. “But we're still hiring bus drivers. We just want to keep getting better and better and better with it. … I wish I could say that everything is perfect. But I know as soon as I say that something will happen. And a bus will be late or something like that. We know that the first couple of weeks of school, there are always a few wrinkles that have to be ironed out.”
The superintendent also said now that those issues from the past are settled, this year, the district’s focus is on discipline.
It introduced a new code of conduct within the past month in an attempt to keep students in the classroom rather than in detention and in suspensions — which Williams believes will help them toward their other goal of improving literacy rates and graduation rates.
Her address will take place at 10:30 a.m. Friday at City Hall.