Kristy Achen says her son has never cried on the first day of school, but that was the case on Tuesday when the school bus was late both before and after school.

“When 9:00 rolled around, I’m like, ‘he’s late for school, get in the car, I’m going to drive you’, so we did that and got him to school,” Achen said. “After school, I had heard that some of the buses had not shown up for well over an hour, so children were left standing on the corner for an hour.”

It was a repeat of the same situation after school as Achen was left standing at the bus stop, waiting for over an hour for her son to show up.

The Regina Catholic School Division offers a “Where’s My Bus” program that allows parents to see where their child bus is through GPS, however, Achen said the GPS wasn’t working on Tuesday.

“I actually wanted to call the police because at that point, I could not get a hold of anybody,” Achen said. “There was zero communication, they can send out emails to parents in a second, there was no communication, I was very fearful, I was wondering where my child was.”

Students at Elsie Mironuck Community School are being picked up by the Regina Catholic School Division this year along with students from St. Mary School. The school division said the amalgamation of bus routes to start the school year comes with some growing pains it hopes will be cleared up by the end of the week.

“We did have some buses running behind [Tuesday], longer than we would have anticipated, and we’re working on that to make that right,” said Twylla West with the Regina Catholic School Board.

“All the information has been sent out to parents over the summer with instructions about how to sign into the parent portal to find out where your kids bus stops are and what times they’re being picked up, there is a bit of a window on either side that they might be picked up, so 8:05 isn’t always 8:05 exactly, but we’ll get there.”

Achen doesn’t feel enough is being done to reassure parents that their child’s bus will be there on time.

“They need to issue an apology and make sure, and insure, that parents can have confidence in them that their children are going to get to school safe,” Achen said.