Stoppages to the bus service have jeopardised students’ education and development, according to the Reverend Leonard Santucci, who is chairman of the board at CedarBridge Academy.

He was speaking during a week where up to half of the school’s students were unable to attend because of a lack of transportation.

Dr Santucci said that it was particularly important for the students to attend this week because they will sit midyear examinations as of Tuesday.

Some 242 out of the 533-strong CedarBridge student population did not attend yesterday, 187 were absent on Wednesday and 264 on Tuesday.

It follows frustration at TN Tatem Middle School, which had 100 students fail to make it to the temporary location at Clearwater Middle School in St David’s on Wednesday.

Non-attendance at both schools was linked directly to bus drivers being kept off the road, whether they wanted to be or not, over the Bermuda Government’s refusal to renew a work permit for the Reverend Nicholas Tweed, pastor at St Paul AME.

Service is expected to return to normal today after Bermuda Industrial Union members agreed to bring an end to the impasse.

Dr Santucci, right, told The Royal Gazette: “We must not jeopardise students’ education and development over issues that do not pertain to the labour union. Whenever we have a stoppage of buses, it has a negative impact on student attendance.

“Our students are being disadvantaged. The failure to have instruction and follow-up opportunities do have negative impacts — the exams are still going ahead because there are timetables that are established that are not easily altered.

“I would recommend that students, parents and families devote additional time to homework both in the evening and over the weekend because their grades have the potential of a lifetime impact.”

Dr Santucci, who is the pastor at Vernon Temple AME Church, said he had tried to contact Chris Furbert to voice his concerns directly, but the BIU president was in a union meeting throughout yesterday morning.

“Had I been able to contact him directly, I would have invited him to put the interests of our students and the next generations of leaders in this country before the issue that has constituted his primary focus this week: the labour unrest,” Dr Santucci said.

“In the future, we need to elevate the basis of our discussions and activity, and we need to look at the broader ramifications if the union wants to have industrial unrest. Do it after they get the students to and from school because their education ought to be one of our No 1 priorities — we must educate our children.

“Failure to educate our children means that we are nullifying everything that our ‘foreparents’ and generations before us have fought and died for.”

Responding last night, Mr Furbert said it was never the intention to cause disruption unnecessarily.