Philadelphia's Broad Street bus facility is indoor, which is different from the other two where buses are parked outside. The Broad Street location also houses the district's training center.
companies are required to go meet the same require- ments to operate for the district. “Whether you are a Mom and Pop or whether you are
a national provider, that scope of services [and the work requirements] is the same,” she said. In 2018, the district implemented a Bus Attendant
ID Program, which ensures contracted bus attendants are showing up at the schools and the district is prop- erly billed for the number of attendants working. Each attendant receives an ID badge and uses tablets to sign in at school sites. At least 80 percent of contracted routes have an assistant on board. That’s regardless of if the student is being transported via an alternative transpor- tation vehicle or a yellow bus. The district does run some transportation in-house, partners with the local transit authority, and has implemented flat-rate passes. About 9 percent of Phila- delphia’s operation is run in-house, spanning over three bus garages and consisting of about 150 routes. Howev- er, the district has the fleet capacity to operate additional routes as it has approximately 300 school buses in its fleet and employs extra drivers in case one of its con- tractors falls short due to the driver shortage. Seventy
66 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2023
percent of the students transported by the district’s fleet to and from public schools are students with special needs, and all have an attendant on the bus. The district has 270 bus attendants employed in-house as well as 213 school bus drivers. Plus, middle and high school students (55,000) utilize
public transit, under a district partnership with SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority). One more program the district utilizes to ensure stu- dents get to and from school, is the flat rate program. In which families are offered a flat rate each month to drive their child to and/or from school to help ease the driver shortage. There are currently 15,000 students utilizing this program.
Fleming noted that the district is also focused on
improving student and driver safety after a recent audit of its camera systems. “We recently purchased some newer equipment for our buses that will allow us to have more advanced camera systems for enhanced safety of the students and drivers,” she said. “I’m pleased that we are moving forward in that direction.” Additionally, the district has GPS monitoring in all
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