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Upper Darby superintendent apologizes for “rough start” to transportation; district outlines causes and fixes
Summary
Superintendent Dr. McGarry apologized for major disruptions to bus service at the start of the 2025–26 school year, blaming a software change, data errors and driver callouts. The district said it signed up vendors’ systems, is increasing routes, and will pursue staffing and communication fixes while working with the drivers’ union.
Superintendent Dr. McGarry apologized to the board and the community for the district’s “rough start” to transportation service at the opening of the 2025–26 school year and outlined technical and staffing issues the district says caused the problems.
Dr. McGarry said the district provides transportation to “nearly 5,000 students” across about “139 different locations” and “over 115 different routes.” He said the district changed routing software this year, moving from VersaTrans to Transfinder, and that errors in merging routing data into the GPS feed meant “almost a thousand students that were supposed to be routed” were not properly loaded into the system during the first week of school. “We wanna apologize as a school district for the the rough start that we've had with transportation this year,” he said.
The superintendent described three principal sources of disruption: a routing-software implementation that did not fully complete before classes began; confusion…
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