Schoolchildren unfairly punished due to STM’s tardiness, parents say
Many schools don’t accept public transit delays as valid excuse for student lateness
A growing number of parents are complaining their children are being unfairly penalized for being late to school because public transit and bus service in particular has been unreliable. Several Montreal schools have policies dictating that tardy public transit or heavy traffic are not acceptable excuses for lateness. This has forced Katrin Dinkel to call her son’s St-Luc High School in Notre-Dame-de- Grâce as many as three times a week this winter and give a fake excuse when his 104 bus didn’t arrive. “I can’t say the bus was late, although they know it and I know it, because that doesn’t count as an excuse,” Dinkel said. “So I have to say it was a family emergency. I have to lie to someone who knows I’m lying. It’s such a stupid, vicious circle.” The last straw came Friday when her son was late because his bus didn’t come and he wasn’t allowed to attend class. He roamed the hallways until he was able to reach his mother so she could speak to the school authorities. “So now they are denying him an education because he was late, which was not his fault to begin with.” Westmount High School sent a letter to parents in late February noting that difficult winter conditions have hampered students efforts because “city buses are either late or so full they pass their stops without picking up new passengers.” The school initially excused late arrivals, but advised that as of Feb. 26 it will no longer do so. It suggested students leave earlier, and warned that all latecomers will receive detentions. The school has contacted the Société de transport de Montréal to lobby for more buses, and suggests parents do the same. In social media posts, several bus routes serving the Notre-Dame-de- Grâce sector were cited for lateness, including the 162, 90, 105 and 104. Schools within the Commission scolaire de Montréal do not penalize children who are late because of delayed public transit, spokesperson Alain Perron said. The school board has been lobbying the STM to provide more buses. Schools within the English Montreal School Board handle the issues individually, spokesman Mike Cohen said. STM spokesperson Amélie Régis said the bus corporation has advised customers several times that this winter has been a particularly difficult one. “The months of January and February were marked by a large range of changing climactic conditions (cold, freezing rain, thaws, etc) … These difficult conditions caused late buses, but also breakdowns that could not always be fixed en route,” Régis said. “These factors, combined with pressure tactics by hardliners within the maintenance union, affected bus availability, in addition to the usual number of buses that must stay in the garage for planned maintenance, as required by the (provincial insurance board) SAAQ.” The bus corporation signed a tentative agreement with its maintenance union this week, which should bring improvements, Régis said. The STM is conducting an overview of all its bus lines, and school’s seeking changes are invited to take part in the consultations that are part of the overview, she said. A Montreal Gazette investigation determined as much as 30 per cent of the STM’s bus fleet is at times unavailable for service because they are parked for maintenance or repairs, so there are not enough working buses to meet the STM’s scheduled needs.