Lost in Transportation: NYC Navigates its Way Through Faulty School Bus System
As the City’s school transportation system presents problems for all, special education students face the most challenges
Everyday over a million students in New York City rely on thousands of school buses to bring them safely to school and drive them home each night. Lately, parents and caretakers are disturbed about the quality of school bus transit in the city — particularly for special education children.
“The first week of school this year was nothing short of a disaster for the city’s yellow buses,” said Johane Severin, deputy counsel for New York City Public Advocate Leticia James, at a hearing on October 16th. The hearing before the New York City Council Committee on Education focused on improvements currently underway at the Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT), as well as plans for future reform. Accountability, transparency, and training for bus drivers are some of the areas that advocates would like to see improved.
As the hearing progressed, Severin outlined the issues currently plaguing school transit. “There were literally thousands of complaints about drivers failing to pick up kids,” Severin said. “One child was left on a bus for over five hours.”
On top of all that, allegations surfaced in September that over 100 people were fraudulently approved to work as school bus drivers without the required background checks. “This is all unacceptable,” Severin said.
Aside from those horror stories, the most common issue is one most New Yorkers are far too familiar with — bus delays. In September 2018, there were 27,082 school bus related delays according to information provided by the Department of Education (DOE). On average, they ran more than 28 minutes late — a worsening from the previous year, when the delay was usually under 25 minutes.
The tardiness is a concern for parents and teachers because it causes students to miss class time. Special education buses account for the bulk of the morning delays, at about 58 percent according to public data from the New York City Council.
Advocates for students with disabilities are particularly concerned about OPT’s ability to meet the needs of this population. Inefficient transportation can cause serious health and mental health consequences.
“It is a fight to get the bare basic accommodations met,” Trishia Bermudez of Rockaway, Queens wrote in her testimony to the Committee on Education. Her son Matthew, a non-verbal child, cannot always easily communicate his needs or discomfort. She said her son’s bus has not had a stable driver which has led to no-shows, extremely late pick-ups or drop offs. Bermudez has missed work and other pertinent events to be available to drive Matthew to school. She said her bus situation has escalated from a lack of air conditioning in September to her son being left on the bus for almost two hours. “I refuse to think about the trauma this has placed on my child,” she wrote.
But Bermudez is not alone in her frustrations with the bus companies.
“We see a lot of issues with bussing for students [with disabilities]” said Maggie Moroff, Special Education Policy Coordinator for Advocates For Children of New York. There are many students who never make it to school because their bus routes are not arranged in time for the school year said Moroff in an interview. Other students have “outrageously long rides,” and may not be able to endure such rides depending on their medical needs, she said.
Anna Hurst is the parent of nine-year-old Omar, who needs extra support during his hour long bus ride from his home in Harlem to a private school in Yonkers. He has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and has severe anxiety when traveling in public. “He gets anxious, and he has ADHD,” she said. “Sometimes he’ll feel like he can’t breathe, he gets real claustrophobic. We can’t get on a crowded train at all.”
Omar is on “limited travel,” which means he is assigned a one-to-one paraprofessional (para) to escort him to and from school. “He can’t get on the bus without [help],” Hurst said. “If that bus para don’t show up, your child can’t go to school.”
This has happened to Omar multiple times this year, and Hurst is fed up. “They need to do something about that,” she said.
Despite the hour-long commute, Hurst is happy with her son’s new private school, in Yonkers because he can ride a smaller school bus. The typical yellow bus holds up to 40 students whose ages range from five to 19 years old. Hurst said she had issues with the older bus. The matrons and paras had trouble communicating with English speaking students, parents, and even the other bus drivers, according to Hurst.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “Neither one of them spoke English and neither one of them spoke each other’s language.” Hurst’s concern is reasonable considering that the matrons are responsible for addressing behavioral problems, bullying, and maintaining overall order on the bus.
Hurst was especially disturbed when disagreements between students would arise on the bus. “A lot of those fights he got in trouble for could’ve got avoided if his para understood English,” she said. Aside from the language barriers, Hurst says the paras didn’t deescalate tense situations as they are supposed to be trained to do. She said her son was often a victim of bullying at his old school, P.S. 811 Mickey Mantle School — a District 75 school, meaning it is designed to provide highly specialized support for students with significant challenges. “This is a D75 school, I can imagine the chaos that’s going on in a regular school,” said Hurst.
Starting last month, the Office of Pupil Transportation added two separate background investigations and fingerprint reviews for every bus driver who works for the DOE, according to Kevin Moran, Senior Advisor to the Chancellor for Transportation. This means that bus drivers and bus attendants will undergo the same rigorous review that teachers, counselors, and paraprofessionals are required to go through — which includes a review of their criminal history, a background questionnaire, background interviews, and a review of any previous DOE employment history.
Opponents of these increased background checks for bus drivers argue that it is already too difficult for people with arrest or conviction records to obtain clearance to work for the DOE. Representatives from the Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights practice who were at the hearing argued that the efforts to discourage the issuance of DOE clearances to New Yorkers with criminal records will have a negative impact on low-income New Yorkers of color. They pointed out that the new policy would harm public school students by “decreasing their access to educators and other professionals of color.”
Still, even with background checks in place, DOE employee misconduct happens. Hurst recalls one incident of her son being physically harmed by paraprofessionals at his old school. She said he would come home with bruises and injuries on his body.
“This guy is putting his knee in my son’s neck” she said. “He’s pinning my son down like he’s in WWE. This is a seven-year-old boy, you don’t need to put your knee in his back, his neck, or anywhere else.” Though the incident was reported, Hurst remains frustrated with the professionalism of the employees at her son’s school.
“DOE is just hiring anybody to be paras, these people are not trained at all” she said. “They’re dealing with children who have outbursts and tantrums and what not, they’re supposed to be properly trained.”
One resolution presented at the hearing by Public Advocate, Leticia James, proposed more extensive training and tracking of the training of school bus drivers and attendants who transport students with disabilities. The Legal Aid Society is amongst the testifiers who support the Resolution. They said that they receive calls every year from parents with students with disabilities regarding incidents on the bus that could have been prevented if the attendant “had a greater ability to handle a student with special needs who is in crisis.”
Moroff said that the DOE has good intentions for fixing all of the problems surrounding students with disabilities, but that it takes a long time to see it all in effect. “There’s a real sort of weird disconnect between what central DOE wants to happen, which is, if you listen to them they sound a lot like us,” Moroff said referring to her nonprofit, Advocates for Children of New York.
“We’re all pushing for the same thing and then something gets lost in translation on its way down to the schools,” she added.
