Boston Public Schools

Despite the fact that Boston was a compact city, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) incurred the highest per-student transportation costs of any major school district in the country – by a wide margin. BPS’s Chief of Operations, John Hanlon, knew that the district had to do something about this expense as it was growing faster than revenues.

One way to reduce costs was to stagger school starting times, improving bus utilization. Hanlon knew there was a great deal controversy and diversity of passionate opinion about school starting and dismissal times. In considering start times, Hanlon faced an enormously complicated problem. How should BPS evaluate a school bell time schedule? That is, if BPS has two schedules A and B, what criteria should they use to determine which one to implement? What information did BPS need to evaluate the schedules and how could the district get that information? What constituencies had a stake in the bell time schedule? When making a bell schedule and associated bus routes, what did BPS control and what was outside the district control?