WTF is the district doing, not immediately firing the engineering firm that developed their bus routes, and suing them for gross incompetence??? A few old bus drivers - with just paper maps, pencils, rulers, and index cards - could have come up with a far better set of routes than that.
There are probably fewer and fewer kids per any given distance, so transportation cost per student keep going up, but for a number of reasons, the funding is not maintained (unless a sufficiently big disaster like this occurs).
Funding for schools is also based on number of students, so funding is being reduced at the same time that transportation cost per student is increasing.
(And, if you are actually interacting with government officials or workers in the wake of a screw-up like this, and favor a more-positive outcome...then you'll get a lot further with "looks like you were suckered by smooth-talking outsiders" than with "looks like you are a bunch of crooks". Best that the latter hypothesis be very quietly investigated until and unless serious evidence is found.)
There's a nationwide shortage of bus drivers. Many retired during covid for good. It is shitty pay and often part-time hours. It really isn't attractive for many people these days, even for retirees.
All too true. OTOH, "we are X drivers short of the number that our new schedule says we gotta have!" would have been known well in advance. And, post-COVID, any competent engineering firm would have determined various driver staffing level cut-offs, below which the school district would have to operate on a reduced basis. (Closing all the elementary schools, or all schools in the east half of the district, or whatever.)
(The former came in very handy when doing extra-curriculars - our debate coach could drive us to meets without incurring the cost of an extra adult to drive the bus. Of course, given that debate meets start early and finish late, and we still had to do the drive, in practice it meant that a very sleep-deprived and stressed out person driving somewhat erratically.)
i.e., public transportation.
I think calling it an engineering firm is insulting to the normal users of the term.
This is a startup that labels itself as "MIT" big brained and clearly incompetent at even calculating travel times on the very routes they print out.
Unfortunately, government is the easiest customer to fleece by a shitty company.