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New app was supposed to revolutionize school busing in Boston, but it made it worse and now councilors, parents want answers

https://www.universalhub.com/2024/new-app-was-supposed-revolutionize-school-busing

Boston City Councilors ordered up a hearing today at which to press Boston school officials to explain how the new BPS Zum (pronounced "zoom," but for obvious reasons not spelled that way) app that was supposed to make BPS buses run as softly as a cloud instead led to some buses not showing up in the morning for an hour or more - and some kids riding buses home for up to three hours as their poor, befuddled drivers tried to navigate Boston's dropped-bowl-of-spaghetti roads. Read more.

New app was supposed to revolutionize school busing in Boston, but it made it worse and now councilors, parents want answers

3 comments

demesisx

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Not sure what this sensationalist headline is about. Zum has been pretty damned good in my experience since last Thursday. There were tons of kinks that needed to be ironed out and clearly there were situations where bus drivers screwed up bad. But honestly, I’ve been impressed with the app and IMO the kinks will be ironed out. It has brought the BPS bussing system to a whole new level of transparency. I can tell down the SECOND where my child and my child’s bus are. Before, you’d get a phone call saying the bus is running late or they couldn’t find a bus driver.

PyroNeurosis

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Flynn cited a Globe report that only 34% of buses were on time on the first day of school last week - down from 61% last year and the worst on-time performance in nearly a decade.

What happened that <34% of busses couldn't make it on time?

stoy

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This reminds me of when Stockholm launched the school platform system, a system that would ease and centralize access to school resources, but after spending a billion SEK it was shit, so a group of parents took the matter into their own hands and built a new app that interacted with the API calls of the system, the new app was great, so the city called the police on the parent group, but the police investigation showed that the parents app only used the information the city had published themselves, nothing illegal had taken place.

Then the city changed gears and worked with the group of parents.

Here is a summary:

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1387097-their-school-app-didnt-work-so-they-built-an-open-source-alternative-then-the-schools-called-the-cops/