Boys and Girls Club Director Addresses Transportation Issues for After-School Attendance

By Heather DiCosimo

Club Director

We are busy here at the Club planning for our 2022/2023 After School Program. We are opening on Monday September 12th!

I wanted to give a quick update, as we know many of our families are trying to figure out transportation and logistics for after school. We are currently brainstorming how to offer transportation from the Hayward Schools to the Club every night after school. The bus company only has room to transport 6 kids to the Club nightly. Over the last few years this is a huge decrease as we use to have 40/50 Hayward students utilizing the Club every night pre COVID. Just like every other business, this is due to a shortage of employees and bus routes have been combined. Ultimately this is restricting all those extra seats that were utilized for so many years coming out to the Club.

We are going to try something new.....

We are going to have a Club van go to the Hayward Schools nightly to pick up students that need transportation to the Club. We are hoping to be right in line with the buses stopping at each building. Keep in mind, our vans are 15 passenger and with the driver that leaves 14 seats.

Starting next Tuesday, we will have a sign up for after school transportation to the Club from Hayward Monday-Friday. It will be a first come first serve basis. It will be for the month of September. Every month we will start a new sign up (starting on the 25th of the current month) to make sure all riders are utilizing the vans on a consistent basis. If the need grows, we would love to work towards adding vans for after school transportation. Please be patient with us as we iron out the kinks.

What to do next if you are interested in utilizing our van for your child/children after school.....

1. Identify which nights your child will utilize the van

2. Call the Club starting Tuesday September 6th @ 9am to register for those days

3. Try and be as consistent as possible

4. Only sign up for days you know your child will be at the Club

We are asking that if you are one of the 6 riders on the Hayward bus to the Club, please stay on their list. This is so the bus barn does not have a logistical nightmare the first day of school and also so we can keep and utilize those 6 seats.

Like I said, this is new to us. Please bear with us. It is important to us that as many kids as possible can utilize the Club after school. We realize how important this is to our families as well.

I would like to gage what kind of need there is for additional transportation moving forward. I kindly ask everyone that would utilize this to please call, private message , or comment on this thread so we can start planning how to move forward and create our new norm!

Please do not hesitate to reach out with questions or possible ideas on how we can make this work!

Miigwech to everyone for your patience while we figure this out! We are super excited to get this school year started with some old, new, and returning friendly faces to greet everyone on Monday September 12th! Watch our page next week as we start to introduce all our staff that have been busy planning for a really fun school year!