Maria Fazio spends most mornings at work watching a purple dot move slowly through a map of Brooklyn on what she and other parents of Sterling School students call \u201cthe cursed route.\u201d<\/p>\n
That dot is a tracking device inside her 9-year-old son Antonio\u2019s backpack. It monitors his trip aboard a yellow, city-funded school bus that travels from Fazio\u2019s home in Bergen Beach, to Sheepshead Bay, Flatbush and Brownsville, before reaching his school in Brooklyn Heights, which serves children with dyslexia<\/a>. Door-to-door, the trip is only 7 miles. But it can take three hours each way.<\/p>\n Fazio said Antonio frequently misses first period, which is dedicated to one-on-one literacy instruction.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the reason why we send him there, and [he\u2019s] missing that hour,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Complaint records filed with the Department of Education show Fazio and other parents flagged at least 24 separate delays about this route to the city\u2019s Office of Pupil Transportation last year. But according to the department\u2019s public data on school bus performance, those delays never happened.<\/p>\n The discrepancy highlights what lawmakers and advocates say is a key flaw in how the city manages its long-dysfunctional school bus system. While school bus companies can be penalized for persistently getting kids to school late, the education department relies on those companies to self-report delays and other issues. The result, a Gothamist analysis found, is that city officials do not have accurate figures on the extent of school bus delays that cut into students\u2019 instructional time and create a constant source of stress for them and their families.<\/p>\n Gothamist spoke with Fazio and seven other parents in different parts of the city who together logged 111 school bus delays and no-shows in the past two school years. Of that total, only 26 appear in the city\u2019s data.<\/p>\n Parents said chronic school bus delays are a major source of stress.<\/p>\n Heidi Norton<\/p>\n The delays disproportionately affect students with disabilities who depend on transportation to specialized programs. Those students already face tremendous academic obstacles, and they are far less likely to graduate from high school than their peers.<\/p>\n Children with disabilities make up almost half the pupils who ride the city\u2019s school buses. Parents told Gothamist their kids missed entire lessons and crucial special education services. The parents said they also struggled to get to work on time because they often have to take their children to school when the bus doesn\u2019t arrive.<\/p>\n Gothamist relied only on documented complaints for its analysis, including emails and screenshots of messages to the city\u2019s Office of Pupil Transportation. All the parents said their kids\u2019 school buses had additional delays that weren\u2019t reported.<\/p>\n Ben Kallos, a former city councilmember who co-wrote legislation passed in 2019 that requires the education department to collect and publicly share data on school bus delays, said he never intended for it to be supplied by bus companies.<\/p>\n Kallos expected the data to come from GPS systems on the buses \u2013 systems that the city purchased for tens of millions of dollars to mixed reviews. However, the legislation did not explicitly require the use of GPS data.<\/p>\n \u201cI can hail an Uber, a Lyft \u2026 I can have a delivery from a restaurant show me exactly where the cyclist is at any given second, and somehow the city can’t do that for a school bus,\u201d Kallos said. \u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Rita Joseph, chair of the City Council\u2019s education committee, said the shoddy data provided by the bus companies prevents legislators from understanding the problem and addressing it. She said she is considering legislation to strengthen the law that requires the education department to report delays, and that she will advocate for changes to the city\u2019s contracts with bus companies.<\/p>\n \u201cI need GPS, I need better service. I need better customer service,\u201d Joseph said. \u201cI need real enforcement standards.\u201d<\/p>\n Fazio, the mother in Bergen Beach, said the chronic delays mean she is often late to work as a second-grade teacher because she has to stay with her son until the bus shows up. \u201cMy anxiety is through the roof,\u201d she said, noting other staff members have to cover for her when she\u2019s tardy.<\/p>\n Maria Fazio, a teacher, says she watches her son’s school bus trip on the “cursed route” with a sense of dread.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Maria Fazio<\/p>\n Her son Antonio takes medication for ADHD. Fazio always gives Antonio his meds just as he\u2019s getting ready to leave the house. The ride to school is often so late and long, she said, that those meds are already starting to wear off by the time he gets to class.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s way behind,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to do better than this. These children have special needs, and they\u2019re being crapped on.\u201d<\/p>\n Education department spokesperson Dominique Ellison said the agency is dedicated to ensuring that all students arrive at school on time. \u201cWe take all delays seriously and are actively working with our vendors to minimize disruptions and get all students to their destinations on time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The agency maintains that overall delays are only a small percentage of the total trips to and from school: less than 3% of 3.4 million annual trips.<\/p>\n Each day, the city updates school bus delays on its Open Data platform<\/a>. In response to questions about the discrepancies, Ellison directed Gothamist to a separate, audited version of the data<\/a> that the agency submits to the City Council twice a year, saying it\u2019s \u201cmore current and accurate.\u201d But a Gothamist analysis found it did not contain any better documentation of the delays reported by the parents.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the largest union representing the city\u2019s bus drivers and a coalition of bus companies insisted that drivers and bus operators accurately report delays.<\/p>\n \u201cOur school bus workers are professionals,\u201d said Carolyn Rinaldi of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181. \u201cWe not only believe that they are reporting delays accurately and in a timely manner, we know they are doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n Carolyn Daly, a spokesperson for a coalition of the city\u2019s largest bus companies, said some traffic delays are \u201cunavoidable\u201d in a congested city, and that companies face higher penalties for failing to report them. A national school bus driver shortage<\/a> is compounding the situation, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cCompanies are pulling out all the stops to recruit drivers, including signing bonuses, flexible hours and higher pay,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Flawed data obscures a grave problem<\/b><\/p>\n East Bronx parent Andrea Daniels shared six emails showing she filed complaints about her daughter\u2019s delayed school bus during the 2023-24 school year. She said the bus was late countless other days but that she didn\u2019t have the time to report every instance. The city\u2019s data, however, shows no delays for her route in the past two years.<\/p>\n Daniels\u2019 daughter Jada, who is on the autism spectrum, just graduated from Bronx High School for the Visual Arts. She said her daughter frequently missed her first-period English Language Arts class last year \u2014 cumulatively amounting to several weeks’ worth of instruction \u2014 even though they live fewer than 2 miles from school. Daniels found out that her daughter was failing the class during a parent-teacher conference last November.<\/p>\n Jada Daniels frequently missed English class due to her school bus being late, her mother said.<\/p>\n Andrea Daniels<\/p>\n \u201cShe was losing motivation because she wasn\u2019t getting to class on time,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd she was missing assignments and handing them in late.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Bronx parent, Jennifer Cruz, has reported 24 delays to the city\u2019s education department over the past two years. But public data shows the route was delayed only three times during that period.<\/p>\n Her 10-year-old son Jonathan has autism and attends a special school near Stuy Town, just under 10 miles from their home. She said he\u2019s an especially funny kid who loves Legos and wants to be a scientist. He also has anxiety, craves routine and dreads sudden changes in plans.<\/p>\n But she said his bus is plagued by lengthy delays, and rides regularly last more than two hours each way. The disruption to his routine causes his anxiety to spike. Long bus rides sometimes trigger his asthma. Cruz said there have been times when Jonathan was on the bus for so long he soiled himself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s like a piece of my heart is going out into the world, you know?\u201d she said of sending her son to school. \u201cI\u2019m holding my breath until he gets there. Then he gets on the bus to come back, and I\u2019m holding my breath again.\u201d<\/p>\n Cruz was shocked to learn the city relies on bus companies to self-report delays.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a helpful strategy at all,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have to get the real data and take the parent complaints into consideration. It would force the bus companies to resolve issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Accurate data on school buses has eluded the city for at least a decade.<\/p>\n From 2015 to 2019, the city used a GPS system for school buses called Navman that cost $9 million. But a Special Commissioner of Investigation probe<\/a> found that nearly 80% of drivers didn\u2019t log onto the tracking system either because it didn\u2019t work or their contract didn\u2019t require them to do so, rendering the technology \u201cuseless.\u201d<\/p>\n The mother of Jonathan Cruz, 10, says he’s at times been stuck on his school bus for so long that he’s soiled himself.<\/p>\n Jennifer Cruz<\/p>\n In 2019 that system was replaced with $36 million GPS tech purchased from the ride-share company Via, but many drivers were slow to log on<\/a> to this system as well.<\/p>\n By the end of the last school year, 90% of drivers were logging onto the system, according to the education department. Parents reported widespread problems with the app on the first two days of school.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Via, Sara-Jessica Dilks, said the company \u201chas been doing everything it intended to in terms of providing parents, NYCPS staff, and school users with trackable, real-time information about students\u2019 bus locations.\u201d<\/p>\n Last spring, the education department solicited new bids for additional GPS technology on school buses.<\/p>\n But the agency continues to rely on the school bus drivers and their companies to self-report delays.<\/p>\n The country\u2019s largest school bus system<\/b><\/p>\n New York City has the country’s largest school bus system. It\u2019s also uniquely complex. It serves about 150,000 children who ride 9,000 routes serving 3,000 schools. Of the total students, 66,000 students with disabilities attend a mix of public and private schools, but are entitled to publicly funded bus service. Their buses crisscross the five boroughs, with some going to the suburbs to bring children to schools best suited to meet their needs.<\/p>\n A school bus depot in Red Hook. New York City spends $1.9 billion on student transportation.<\/p>\n Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Most big cities manage a single in-house bus fleet or work with one or two private companies. Atlanta and Boston have their own fleets. Los Angeles contracts with one private company. But New York City contracts with more than 40 vendors employing drivers from three unions. The city spends $1.9 billion annually<\/a> on student transportation, up from $1 billion a decade ago.<\/p>\n Parents and advocates said the city\u2019s school bus system is also uniquely dysfunctional. The city\u2019s yellow bus industry has a sordid history featuring corrupt union leaders<\/a>, unscrupulous city officials<\/a>, negligent drivers<\/a> and organized crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou hear from students and families who have essentially been crying into a void for years, upon years, upon years about the inadequacies,\u201d said Nyah Berg, a leader of The Road to Better Busing Coalition, a group made up of education and disability rights advocates.<\/p>\n Berg said many of the system\u2019s problems are rooted in contracts with bus companies that were brokered in 1979 and haven\u2019t been meaningfully updated in 46 years. She said the outdated contracts do not include the accountability necessary to ensure kids get to school and back on time.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aIt\u2019s like being stuck in a Groundhog Day. A Groundhog Day of Hell,\u201d Berg said.<\/p>\n