The Road to Better Busing Coalition Releases a Statement on the Three-Year Contract Extension for Yellow Bus Service in New York City
- Rochelle Du
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
11.21.25, 12:45 PM– Last night, after months of parents, advocates, and educational justice organizations urging the City not to approve long-term extensions of outdated school bus contracts and the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) opposing 5‑year contract extensions, a 3-year extension has been proposed and adopted.
As a coalition, we celebrate the parent, student, and activist voices whose persistence pushed the PEP to hold firm against a 5-year extension. Their testimonies—offered for years, and especially since July—ensured that the City did not rubber‑stamp a contract extension that would have significantly delayed urgently needed changes to a system that fails students every day, especially students with disabilities, students in temporary housing, and those in foster care.
Let us be clear: many parents believe that three years is still far more than bus companies deserve—and we agree. If this were a conversation about what is deserved, students would have safe, reliable, on‑time transportation tomorrow. If it were about what is deserved, students with disabilities would not have endured decades of failures caused in part by contracts that have gone essentially unchanged since 1979, or a system allowed to deteriorate so profoundly that progress will take years to rebuild.
This extension is retroactive to when contracts formally expired in June, leaving approximately 2.5 years for all involved to collaborate, plan, and act. This period must include meaningful parent and student involvement, transparent benchmarks, and clear commitments from elected leaders to ensure we are not back in the same place three years from now.
Our calls to action remain unchanged. We are simply one step closer to achieving them:
We continue to demand that the City reprocure bus contracts as soon as possible.
We continue to support passage of A.8440 / S.1018, which would allow the City to rebid contracts without eliminating essential worker protections and risking a bus strike.
And we demand that NYCPS begin making improvements immediately—changes that do not require shifts in state law or contract structure but do require a transformation of OPT’s operations and oversight.
We once again affirm the voices of parents and students who refuse to be ignored on this issue, and emphasize the urgency with which all stakeholders must come together to build a better, safer, more reliable yellow bus system for all NYC students.