We thank the New York City Council’s Committees on Education and Contracts for jointly holding this critical school bus transportation services hearing. My name is Ruth DiRoma, and I am a Senior Family Educator at INCLUDEnyc. INCLUDEnyc is the leading source of training and information for young people ages 0-26 with known or suspected disabilities, their parents, and the professionals who support them. We have helped New York City families navigate the complex special education service and support systems for over 40 years.
This school year has begun with all of the familiar issues we have experienced with school transportation over the years — routing issues, staffing turnover and shortages, restrictive schedules such as no busing after school or during the summer, and the many other systemic barriers related to busing.
Families contact our Help Line because they seek help resolving their child’s busing issues due to the lack of timely and clearly outlined steps for escalation processes and procedures from both schools and NYCPS. As a result, it prevents thousands of students with disabilities each year, if not tens of thousands of students receiving special education services, from adequately receiving all their mandated related services and specialized instruction and from being able to fully and consistently attend their programs.
Students with disabilities should not continue paying high educational and social-emotional costs for faulty and insufficient busing while bus companies continue to have contracts extended without improving their service. Furthermore, the leading City school busing contract still in place today is nearly forty-five years old. Since 1979, when the first school bus strike occurred, year after year, busing contracts have been extended as opposed to the City putting out new bids for contracts. This should not be allowed to continue, and new contracts would create the environment for improved service and stronger accountability metrics. New contracts coupled with changes in admission policies could lead to students with disabilities being more integrated with general education students, just as the U.S. Supreme Court intended busing to be more than half a century ago in their 1971 decision when they ruled the federal courts could use busing as a desegregation tool.
Additionally, we fully support the Council’s adoption of proposed local law 0515-2024, requiring the DOE to report on school bus services and employees. More transparency not only has the potential for bus companies to provide better quality services, but it also lends itself to building trust with families in an overdue area for repairs.
We also urge the City to allocate resources to enhance the parent-facing bus app and fund a public outreach campaign. Because far too many parents don’t even know it exists. While it allows parents to see the location of their child’s bus, it does not tell parents what time their child gets into their school in the mornings or actual boarding times at the end of the day. We know there are far too many students sitting in idling buses for long periods both at the start and end of school days. Because there are students from multiple schools on the same routes yet with different school schedules, this is not okay.
Additionally, we recommend that New York City Public Schools and the City:
- Put pressure on the state legislature in the next legislative session to amend Section 14 of Section 305 of NYS education law stating busing contracts shall be awarded to the lowest responsible bidder, allowing the City to gain more control over the quality and delivery of services.
- Rebid City busing contracts by July 1, 2025.
- Update Chancellor Regulation A-801 on Pupil Transportation by the end of this school year. They were last updated 24 years ago.
- Mandate additional annual training for all NYC busing staff on young people with disabilities. Require these trainings to be conducted by professionals with expertise in this area, and not allow bus companies to deliver them.
- Mandate one campus per bus route.
- Split up students according to their chronological ages, so elementary-aged students can no longer be assigned to buses with students up to the age of 21.
- Develop an additional public-facing accountability tool that accurately captures the timeliness of curb-to-school routes from bus-centered to student-centered.
- Allocate adequate resources for a multi-year public awareness campaign about the Via busing app.
Thank you for taking the time to consider these important matters. We look forward to partnering with you to improve equity and access for all students with disabilities in New York City.
Respectfully submitted,
Ruth DiRoma
Senior Family Educator