ST. LOUIS, MO – The 2024-25 academic year for the Saint Louis Public School District began without much of the pomp and circumstance typically seen in recent years, when superintendents would fan out to publicly welcome students back to buildings with media in tow.

Instead, Acting Superintendent Dr. Millicent Borishade said she visited ten schools, including Gateway STEM, CVPA and six others, with less fanfare.

This year, administrators were working to ensure that a patchwork transportation program, set up because the district’s bus vendor canceled its contract a year early, would still function after the district notified parents Saturday that more than 1,000 students would need an alternative because several vendors fell through. Those families were given gas cards. 

Dr. Borishade said she hopes things will be better on the second day of school and has this message for parents, “I stand with them. It should be better, and we are working to make it better.”

The vendors, part of a group of almost two dozen agencies and organizations, were vetted by district administrators, but did not have to provide a guarantee of vehicles or the staff to drive them, the district said Monday afternoon.

The last weekend scramble, which included phone banks to notify parents, also yielded more buses from established vendors like First Student, which contributed five more buses to the effort. As a result, students at Vashon High School who would have needed to take a Bi-State MetroBus to school were instead able to take a regular school bus. 

But several buses arrived at Vashon appearing nearly empty, a scene reportedly repeated at other district buildings. At a late afternoon news conference, administrators attributed the empty buses to parents stepping forward to transport their children to school.

Students were expected to arrive district-wide via a mixture of buses, taxis, rideshares and other methods, which a district spokesperson said was not out of line with what it had done previously.

“A lot of these things to be frank, we’ve used in the past. Maybe not to the same scale, to the same level, but we’ve been using these methods for years and so that’s nothing new. What we’ve done is we’ve tried to update the efficiency and get ourselves in a place where we’re more efficient, where we’re getting more students in better places to be in school on time and ready to go,” SLPS Communications Director George Sells said.

Sells said the vendors who had fallen through were still being given a chance to come up with the drivers or vehicles necessary to transport students.

A memorandum of understanding with Bi-State, just signed Sunday, provides for service for high school students and the possibility of additional routes if necessary, at a cost. The district and Bi-State can cancel the agreement at any time, with 30 days notice

Even in more ideal circumstances, the first day of school is typically a day where kinks are going to come up. Nobody’s perfect, but Sells insisted it won’t be for a lack of trying.

“There’s not a school in the world if they tell you that they had a perfect first day of school I’ll tell you that they’re kidding themselves. That’s everywhere in America, probably everywhere in the world but what I can tell you is that in this district nearly four thousand people have been working endlessly to make sure that these schools are ready for these students and we’re so excited to get going,” he said.  

Dr.  Borishade said there was a 72% attendance rate district-wide, which, given the circumstances "was a good start." The district is still compiling on-time rates for transportation. She added the support of the community and parents stepping up to help the children get to school "shows what kind of community we have."