WEST SENECA, N.Y. — There were a lot of places where Heather Proudman saw herself spending her kids’ first day of school. Her driveway was not one of them.
Her fourth and fifth-graders returned Thursday to Winchester-Potters Elementary in West Seneca School District. But the most challenging part of their day wasn’t even inside school doors.
“It's terrifying,” Proudman said. “They’re fourth and fifth-graders. They’re still little kids. And I had no clue where they were … West Seneca transportation completely failed this year.”
Proudman says the district’s failure started at the start of the day when her kids were never assigned a bus route. It only progressed as the day winded down when the bus they took to school never returned.
“Every first day of school, everything's always late,” she said. “That’s a given buses, showing up an hour late. That's understandable. But I waited an hour to get a call from the school that my kids weren't put on a bus.”
Proudman wasn’t alone with dozens of other parents expressing their frustrations on Facebook after receiving a call from the district stating they must pick their students up from campus.
According to the district, 7 percent of the student population received that call due to what they said in a statement were errors with the new bus software system.
“Once the system was pressure tested with actual bus runs, the system and software did not interface correctly and created delays and false errors,” the statement read.
West Seneca also assured parents they are working diligently to fix the problem. But after Thursday, Proudman said that isn’t enough.
“For now, my kids are not getting on a bus until everything is situated,” she said. “I'm not just sending my kid to school in hopes that West Seneca gets them back to me.”
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