Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Tuesday, that as the Boston Public Schools prepare to start classes on September 1, the system’s staffing levels are have markedly improved from previous years.

“I just came from the August Leadership Institute with all of our school leaders and their teams and superintendent and school committee chair this morning,” Wu said on GBH’s Boston Public Radio. “And Superintendent [Mary] Skipper reported that we have 733 bus drivers hired and ready to go, plus another 30 who are [training] right now.

“This is the first time we’ve been fully staffed with school bus drivers [since] at least pre-pandemic, and maybe many years [more],” she added.

Wu also said BPS currently has 100 more bus monitors than it did at this time last year, and that 97% of the entire system’s jobs are currently filled.

“Sometimes it’s small victories, when there’s been such disruption and stress on the school system through the pandemic and since then,” Wu said. “It’s been a lot of hard work in terms of organization building [and] training. ... As a mom, I’m extra excited for the kids to go back to school.”

In the fall of 2022, the BPS transportation system — which has a budget of more than $100 million — was plagued by problems that elicited sharp criticism from advocates and elected officials and prompted a state investigation. Earlier that year, transportation issues — chief among them the number of students arriving to school on time — were some of several BPS problems that led Boston to reach an oversight agreement with state regulators.

BPS would also be a key part of a developing collaboration in the works between the city and a group hoping to bring a National Women’s Soccer League franchise to Boston. The mayor says a deal to make White Stadium in Franklin Park the team’s home field is coming into focus.

“We have made the tentative designation for it to be a partnership with the Boston Public School system and a potential professional women’s soccer team,” Wu said. “This is a really unique arrangement. I don’t know if you could find any other professional sports team who would be playing out of a public-school owned facility.

“Next steps would be digging in to negotiate a lease where they would renovate half of the grandstand for the team’s purposes and locker rooms,” she added. “BPS and the city would renovate the other half. Everything would flow together, and we would keep our fingers crossed to be able to welcome that team.”

Multiple reports earlier this year said Boston is one of a few cities awarded expansion teams by the NWSL, but the league has yet to confirm that.

Wu didn’t expand on her recently stated plan to implement a new approach in response to public safety concerns in the neighborhood known as Mass. and Cass, which has been the epicenter of Greater Boston’s addiction and homeless crises for years.

She did stress, though, that tents and tarps in the area make it difficult to effectively provide services to people living on the street.

Those structures obscure “illegal weapons, drug trafficking, violence, and worse,” Wu said. “And so we’re working to, as we head into colder weather, make sure that we have action steps that will continue making it possible for services to be connected and delivered to people.”

Wu also celebrated a recent state regulatory ruling that could pave the way for the return of addiction services on Long Island in Boston Harbor. The bridge linking the island to the mainland was closed in 2014 over safety concerns, and the population that had received care there gravitated to Mass. and Cass, where services are concentrated.

“When I’ve spoken to people who were on Long Island ... the first thing out of their mouths is how much that environment was just as important as the programming and the services themselves,” Wu said. “That you could be on such a peaceful place where it was just nature, and you look out and you can see the city skyline, but there was just this calm — and that that contributed a lot to the effectiveness of being in recovery.”

However, Wu added, a reopened recovery campus on Long Island is still at least four years away.