{"id":455538,"date":"2025-12-18T12:47:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/455538\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T12:47:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:47:25","slug":"nearly-43m-in-penalties-left-uncollected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/455538\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly $43M in penalties left uncollected"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City public schools left tens of millions of dollars on the table last year<\/a> in penalties from yellow bus companies, as poor service continues to strand students and force parents to miss work<\/a>, a new comptroller\u2019s audit found Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The penalties were for violations related to GPS technology that drivers must log into at the start of their routes<\/a>\u00a0so parents can track the bus or their children once aboard.<\/p>\n

But Comptroller Brad Lander found that school transportation officials assessed damages in just 5.5% of cases where drivers did not log in, collecting $1.7 million in penalties. That left $42.6 million in uncollected penalties for the one category of contract breach, according to the audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor decades, our city\u2019s school bus system has failed our students and families,\u201d Lander said in a statement. \u201cParents and guardians miss work, students miss class and breakfast, and kids with disabilities are stranded when our school bus system lacks the accountability and organization we need to fix systemic issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CityCity Comptroller Brad Lander. (Gardiner Anderson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The audit followed months of pain and uncertainty across the $2 billion school bus sector, including a contract dispute that threatened to derail service for tens of thousands of students<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the start of the school year, the Panel for Educational Policy, the city\u2019s pseudo-school board in a system controlled by the mayor, declined to rubber-stamp a lengthy contract extension without a path forward to improve yellow bus service. Last month, the city and companies finalized a retroactive extension for three years<\/a>, rather than the original term of five years, as advocates push for more sweeping changes at the state level.<\/p>\n

Many of the panel members\u2019 concerns with school bus performance were reflected in the comptroller\u2019s data.<\/p>\n

Parents made more than 15,000 calls about late pickups or arrivals during the 2023-24 school year, and lodged more than 14,000 complaints about yellow bus no-shows, according to the audit. Those figures could be an undercount: There were more than 5,000 reports of disconnected calls.<\/p>\n

Students approved for bus service disproportionately have disabilities or are homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cComptroller Lander\u2019s team has confirmed, with data, what frustrated school bus families and workers have said for years: that this service must be done better, with more forethought and less waste,\u201d said Sara Catalinotto, co-founder of Parents to Improve School Transportation, a parent advocacy group better known by its acronym: \u201cPIST.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat other school system outsources busing to 48 private companies, considers two hours an acceptable route length, and treats K-12 as a single age group?\u201d Catalinotto added. \u201cIntentions aside, the current approach objectively sets students up for educational harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dominique Ellison, a spokeswoman for the public schools, said the audit lacks \u201ccritical context.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their formal response to the comptroller, as part of the audit, education officials wrote that while the number of delays may seem high, the figures \u201cshould not be viewed without context regarding the scope of school bus operations in New York City\u201d \u2014 with upward of 8,000 routes, running twice per day.<\/p>\n

In total, officials issued $4.9 million in liquidated damages to yellow bus companies for any number of service issues, according to data from last fiscal year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always investigate any and all complaints thoroughly, hold all individuals accountable for any major issues, and we have made significant progress throughout the years,\u201d Ellison said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City public schools left tens of millions of dollars on the table last year in penalties…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":455539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,407,1370,728,405,403,5294,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-455538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-county","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115740649697597863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}