The Road to Better Busing Coalition Releases a Statement on the Predictable Busing Errors on NYC’s First Day of School
9.10.26 at 5:00 PM, New York, NY— Today marked the first day of school for students across New York City, and for a majority of students and their families, this day was met with excitement, curiosity, and overall joy for a new year of learning. Unfortunately, for thousands of other students and families, the first day of school was filled with anxiety, nervousness, and frustration because a bus was delayed, missing, or nonexistent.
At the beginning of this week, several news outlets reported that roughly 2,000 students, mainly students with disabilities, were without a bus for the first day of school. This number is likely underestimated and does not include students still in the process of being routed for bus service, nor does it likely reflect other pending issues such as a shortage of mandated bus paraprofessionals. We are entirely unsurprised by the many stories of students without a bus. We are also very attuned to the many untold stories of students who packed their backpacks ready for a school day but never got to participate because they never had a bus.
Bronx mother Rima Izquierdo reported that, “The student transportation paraprofessional (bus para) mandate on one of my family member’s IEP is not filled, and it took all morning to navigate the rideshare while also supporting other siblings to go to school. Twenty-six of his schoolmates are in the same position, unable to ride the routes they have. Transporting our own students can easily become a full-time, unpaid job. Unreliable transportation keeps parents out of the job market.”
Gracia P. shared that while she is happy that her rider has a familiar bus attendant, who kindly communicates by text, the convoluted route meant that he did not reach school until 9:45 AM after a 7:50 AM pickup, in violation of a 60-minute in-borough limited time travel mandate agreed to by the Office of School Health.
While this year’s problems are particularly egregious, the chaos that is school busing at the start of the year is not a new problem; it is consistently predictable. The lack of communication to families who depend on transportation to get their kids to and from school, and the decades of unsolved, entirely predictable problems, are frankly unacceptable. So is the confusion coming from NYCPS and government officials who work on this issue, who keep offering stop-gap measures that rarely come close to solving the problems.
Paullette Ha-Healy, Special Education advocate and mother of two, questioned, “Why were school principals and directors required to interrupt their preparations for reopening, simply to contact families on behalf of the Office of Pupil Transportation, when that office has a call center under a contract with Nagarro Inc. worth ten million dollars?”
For example, families whose child needed a bus but did not receive a route for the first day of school were offered rideshare vouchers as a temporary fix. While helpful for some families, advocates have been raising the limits of this solution for years:
It does nothing for families who don't have the flexibility in their day to accompany their child in the rideshare, as is required.
It does nothing to address the fact that many families may not even know a voucher exists, or where to find one.
The primary method of providing it to families depends entirely on families having an online NYC Student Account (NYCSA), which is inaccessible to many first-day kindergartners’ families and to most guardians of students attending non-NYCPS schools.
Messaging to NYCPS families does not make clear that they should log in monthly to prevent the NYCSA account from being deactivated. There is also conflicting guidance as to whether an 18-year-old student with a disability may ride unaccompanied.
There is complete uncertainty as to how many weeks or months the routes will be out.
Rideshare users are isolated from their peers, in vehicles which lack the yellow buses’ built-in design for student safety, with a rotating cast of drivers who lack any special training, and families sometimes have difficulty getting a rideshare vehicle in the first place.
The Road to Better Busing Coalition is thankful that this administration has shown some promise and openness to listening to solutions proposed by longtime advocates and nonprofits who work overtime to support students and families lost in the school bus chaos. However, we are also frustrated that the challenges of years past remain challenges today, with lessons seemingly not learned. We also acknowledge that part of the problem lies within a system operating on nearly 50-year-old school bus contracts that lack accountability and the flexibility to meet today's needs.
Sara Catalinotto, Parents to Improve School Transportation co-founder, said, “We thank all the bus drivers and attendants who got up before the sun to serve students, some of whom also took personal time to alert management to problematic routes, and now have to wait, alongside the suffering riders and families, for a resolution from OPT. We remain frustrated that direct communication and troubleshooting is only happening in pockets where parents belong to mutual support groups and/or know who to write to at Tweed.”
Nyah Berg, Executive Director of New York Appleseed, said, "The first day of school should be joyful. Unfortunately, for too many families with a child who needs a bus, it is stressful due to a lack of communication and the overall dysfunction of our school busing system. There are both short-term and long-term solutions to the school bus crisis; the City must work on both."
Randi Levine, Policy Director of Advocates for Children of New York said:
"It's not just unacceptable; it's illegal to leave thousands of students with disabilities without a bus for the start of the school year. The students most likely to be without routes are those with the most intensive needs who are often placed in schools farthest from where they live. The City should take all steps needed to get more buses online and, where they fall short, should be working with each impacted family to identify a transportation plan that will get the student to school. In addition to putting in place immediate solutions for families, this emergency further highlights the need for the City to pursue longer term solutions to fix our city’s broken busing system."
That is why our call as a coalition continues to be that NYCPS, the Panel for Educational Policy, and City Hall do everything in their power to improve bus service now! We seek their support for passage of state legislation that ensures we can recruit and retain dedicated bus staff and allows for the rebidding of new bus contracts that deliver the high-quality, safe, and reliable transportation students deserve.
