A Facebook group of concerned parents has grown rapidly with complaints about late buses, buses that don’t show up, poor communication and safety issues.
As of Friday, the group reached over 600 members.
Karen Kearney of Halifax is one of them. She has a nine-year-old daughter and six-year-old son who have been late for school several times because of late buses.
“A bus is showing up, but it's showing up one minute before the bell rings for the class to start, which means my children are late every day to school," says Kearney.
Kearney’s also concerned about general safety and the reliability of bus equipment.
“The temporary bus we had in late November, he pulled up to our stop and he's like, ‘Oh, I can't take the kids because I can't get the stop sign on,'" says Kearney.
Halifax Regional School Board chair Gin Yee says there will be a meeting next week with Stock Transportation senior management to talk about the concerns.
"We pay on behalf of the taxpayer, on behalf of our students, $18 million to (Stock Transportation). They need to communicate to our public more effectively," says Yee.
In a statement to CTV News, Stock Transportation’s chief operation officer Terri Lowe said, "We take safety and the concerns of our parents very seriously. Yesterday, our safety and training supervisor was traveling on our routes to evaluate stops and routing, assessing how we can best serve our students and parents."
But Kearney says all she wants is for the system to settle down and provide timely, dependable service.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ron Shaw.
