New York City schools continue to wrestle with an ongoing bus shortage amid city contract issues as Black and Brown families, especially children with disabilities, suffer. Parents and advocates emphasize that these transportation delays have been a long-standing problem and want bus companies held accountable.
More than 80,000 school bus delays were reported during the 2023-24 school year, according to Advocates for Children of New York (AFC). Among them were special education students, and others who live far from their chosen schools and rely on the buses for transportation.
The AFC said this school year has started off equally rough for thousands of students.
Randi Levine, policy director for AFC, attributed the bulk of school bus delays to outdated city contracting and the fact that bus companies can choose their routes, often leaving out kids with longer or farther-out routes.
“Most of the bus contracts were signed in 1979 and that is what we are using today. Unfortunately, those bus contracts do not meet the needs of today’s students,” said Levine.
Under New York State law, the city’s school bus contracts have employee protection provisions. Levine explained that if the city were to rebid the contracts and eliminate those bus worker protections, there would likely be a massive strike. A situation that crippled school bus service for tens of thousands of students under the administration of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2013.
The current problems follow a standoff with school bus companies over a contract dispute from last year that ended with a three-year contract extension.
“We are calling on the state and the city to work together to ensure that New York City can rebid the bus contracts to provide more flexibility, capacity and accountability. And to meet the needs of today’s students and families,” Levine continued.
The NYC Department of Education (DOE) has responded by providing families with bus trackers and a prepaid rideshare service that has been a “lifeline,” said Levine.
But even for students with access to school buses, there have been reports of pupils arriving late, spending hours to go a few miles, or overcrowding on buses because they can’t utilize rideshare, said Levine.
This innovative solution of using car services is unhelpful for many working class parents, said Levine. The service requires a parent or adult to ride with the student in rideshares like Uber or Lyft, usually necessitating that someone call out or inform their job in order to get their child to school on time. It can also be tricky if a parent has more than one child to transport at a time.
Deon Jones, the founder and executive director of Uniquely Me Creative Arts (UMCA), runs a special education, arts, and sensory zone in Brooklyn dedicated to empowering children with disabilities and strengthening families. Her son, Elijah, 19, has Down syndrome, autism, and Sensory Processing Disorder.
“Last week, Monday, I had to take him to school because there was no bus route. No one from the bus company called me. And when I called them to ask where the bus was, they said that the driver is out so they won’t have a bus for the entire day,” said Jones. “So if I didn’t have a car or any other type of transportation to get him to school, he would be at home, missing his education services, and also his related services like occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy.”
Jones said that she has had to let her supervisors know she will be late to work at the last minute many times. In those instances, it’s difficult to use the DOE’s rideshare because it has to be scheduled ahead of time.
“There should be laws against these bus companies who are contractors. How do we put measures in place — they already get citations for complaints,” said Jones. “How [are] the bus companies feeling the heat when they don’t pick up children or they’re extremely late? What is the true repercussion of this? How do we now hold the bus companies responsible?”
Perhaps the most egregious example of how dangerous the bus shortage can be is when a bus reportedly “disappeared” with six nonverbal children for more than four hours from P.S. 289 The Brower School in Brooklyn last year. The elementary students, ages 6 to 8, were supposed to be dropped off at the school in the morning but didn’t arrive until late afternoon. It was reported that “one student was found wet and lying down on a bus seat after she urinated on herself and removed her own diaper and leggings” during the time the students were unaccounted for.
“It is highly disturbing that six nonverbal children were left on a school bus for hours while their whereabouts remained unknown to school officials,” Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman said in a statement to the New York Daily News. “These particularly vulnerable students rely on the adults entrusted with their care to ensure their safety.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference on the first day of school that his administration is doing everything it can to remedy the situation.
There’s also the DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT), which deals with yellow buses and OMNY services for students. And, outside of the education department, there’s the Parents to Improve Transportation (PIST NYC).
The Amsterdam News reached out to the NYC Department of Education but didn’t receive a response by press time.
