By Joshua Diaz ’27
Starting the second week of October, the bus company used by Derby High school began picking students up ten minutes earlier to get to the school as early as 7:05am.This means buses that are typically late now come early enough that there is a shorter line for breakfast.
This decision was made by the principal and the people in charge of the bus company so students aren’t rushed during breakfast due to the long line or a late bus arrival. The bus company, All-Star Transportation starting in 2004, has provided the buses that DHS uses to go to and from school. They value people and feel responsible to their workers and customers. Another change is that everyone is required to go to either the senior lounge or to the cafeteria. Some students don’t like this change as they aren’t able to immediately go to their class, while others aren’t affected as they already spend the morning in the cafeteria.
When asked if this was a permanent change, DHS principal Jennifer Olson said, “For now we see it as a permanent change, yes, so we started bringing the buses in, a lot of times the buses arrived here early and just sat in the parking lot waiting for 7:15 some buses were arriving as early as 7:00 and had to just let kids wait on the bus.” So the change wasn’t only due to some buses being too late but some buses being too early.
I had also questioned All-Star transportation worker Donald Saraniero about the new changes. When I asked if the new change was sudden he responded with, “The changes were not specifically planned but when we work on routes over the summer we generally anticipate that some changes may be required. … This year at a meeting of the Derby administrators they identified a consistent issue with the arrival times of buses at DHS and after discussing these issues we set to work adjusting times for the drivers in our routing software.” So the change was somewhat sudden for everyone, for us the students, some of the staff like the cafeteria workers and other staff including bus drivers.
Olson commented on why the bus schedule has changed. The main reasoning was due to the long times waiting at the breakfast line. She said, “We had noticed that a lot of kids were struggling with being able to get through the breakfast line, eat breakfast, maybe have a chance to connect with a friend in the 15 minutes that we were open from 7:15 to 7:30, so when classes started we felt like we were rushing students for eating.” She wanted students to have a chance to eat breakfast in time because some students had to decide whether to eat breakfast or be late to class due to some buses coming in late.
When asked how drastic of a change this was for drivers Saraniero replied with, “These changes weren’t drastic for the drivers, it required them to sign in a little earlier than they would normally but we gave them advance notice of this. They were able to come in fresh on a Monday to start their new schedules.”
This change doesn’t affect the drivers as it does the students, the buses who already came early were only a slight adjustment while the buses that would arrive later now have to clock in early as they were all given an advance to come earlier and notify students and parents.
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