Prospect Sierra School Bus
Can anybody share their experience using the Prospect Sierra school bus? We're applying but the reality is that we probably can't make the distance work without transportation help. Does the bus only run at the beginning/end of the school day or is there also a bus after enrichment classes/afterschool? How easy is it to have the kids go to one stop on M/W/F and a different one on T/Th (i.e. if they're going to their grandparents' house?) I can't seem to find a schedule anywhere. I also saw complaints in a review from a few years back. Is anybody currently using it who can share their experiences? Thanks!
Jan 21, 2020
Parent Replies
Hi - Prospect Sierra uses Zum. Check out this site https://ridezum.com/schools/prospectSierra/
I don't use it, but I know lots of families who are happy to have the service. There are also many carpools and the school is good about hooking up neighborhoods for carpool options.
Do they still have the buses? As of a few years ago when my child graduated from Prospect Sierra they had switched to Zum. Zum is a company that provides black SUVs to drive the kids to school. They cover the same bus routes the school used to have but instead of a yellow school bus the kids ride four or five to a car. I had mixed feelings about the switch. It was less social than the bus since the kids are riding in small groups. And I hated putting my kid in a fancy black SUV to go school like some kind of oligarch. On the other hand, the cars were more reliable than the bus. My kid's driver never broke down or came late. The kids were assigned the same car for the whole year and got to know the driver. The school did have the option for a ride for after school activities. During the bus days they had a single scheduled time late in the day for the bus to leave. When they switched to Zum you could arrange a regular after activities ride home or you could let them know the day before if you needed a late ride on a one off basis. The bus was a little better in that regard because you could just text your kid and say "get on the late bus" but the Zum shuttles worked fine once I got used to the system. In the end, we really liked the school and the transportation, whether bus or Zum, made it workable for us. There's no way I could have done that drive twice a day and I appreciated that I didn't have to arrange carpools myself. You should check with the school about their current transportation service but we were comfortable with both modes.