(This letter was sent to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Shine and to the Manhasset Press for publication.)

I am writing to you to express my frustration over the many problems we have experienced with our bus routes (#8 in the a.m. and #29 in the p.m.) for my fourth grader's transport to and from Munsey Park Elementary School.

Our morning bus has yet to be on time. Therefore, I have had no choice but to drive my son to school daily.

Our afternoon bus has been even more problematic. On the first day of school, my child arrived home upset, after having lost confidence in the driver's ability to get him home safely. Apparently, the driver was unfamiliar with the streets in Strathmore Village, and was equally unfamiliar with the stops on his route. After having passed our stop and our house several times without discharging students, my son and the other children from our route decided to get off at an unfamiliar stop which was located over five blocks away and walk home. The driver was oblivious to the fact that these children were not to disembark at this stop.

It has been extremely difficult to reach anyone for assistance at the bus garage. Apparently, that office is being inundated with calls from issues/problems with stops and routes. As hectic as it can be at the beginning of the school year for the transportation department, I have never experienced such problems contacting someone in transportation in the past 11 years that I have had children in this district.

Yesterday, my son had not yet arrived home by 4:30 p.m. from Munsey Park School. The children from route 29 were left at the school while the bus was stuck behind a broken-down mail truck. My son was told that there was no available bus at that time to pick them up, and they would have to wait.

I have heard from other parents that they have also experienced various new and unusual difficulties with transportation that did not occur with our in-house transportation. I must say that I find it surprising that Huntington Coach, that made such extensive efforts to offer polished presentations and endless promises to parents last year, now appears to be ill equipped to fulfill the contract appropriately on several of Manhasset's routes. Perhaps they should consider more training and more dry runs for the drivers who are clearly unfamiliar with our streets and our stops.

I must also alert you to another safety issue. When I served last year on the CAC that looked at the qualitative issues surrounding outsourcing, one of the concerns that came up was the fact that many of the private bus companies did not provide drivers with lists of children's names associated with each bus stop-only the number of students assigned to that stop. We outlined this issue as a safety concern, and suggested in our report to the board that the contracted company be required to provide drivers with complete information-children's names, addresses, and telephone numbers. I understand from the transportation office that this has not yet been done. I guess this is why my son was allowed to disembark from the bus at an unfamiliar stop-a clear safety and potential liability issue.

I would appreciate if you would address these concerns with Huntington Coach and suggest that they offer better driver training on our streets. I would also like to see a better system of controls regarding children and the stops at which they should be discharged. It is also a matter of safety that the district's transportation office be sufficiently staffed to meet the needs of the families in the district. If we can't reach someone now, at the start of school, which is a predictably busy time for school transportation, what will happen if there is an emergency crisis?

Until these issues are resolved, I guess I will be driving!

Carol Goldfond