NYC School Bus Mess Leads To Scrutiny From City Council

NEW YORK — Lawmakers want to outfit every New York City school bus with a GPS tracker after transportation failures left kids late and stranded at the start of the school year. The proposal is part of a legislative package the City Council unveiled Tuesday that would provide heightened oversight of the city's beleaguered student transportation system.

"Parents have enough to worry about without having to be concerned for the safety or whereabouts of their children during school bus rides," Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), the Education Committee chairman, said in a statement. "The reports and complaints we have received right from the start of this new school year echo issues parents have raised for some time."

While officials said busing issues are typical early in the school year, this year was worse than usual. Delayed buses ran an average of 28.1 minutes late in September, up from with 24.8 minutes in the same month last year, data compiled by the Council shows.

Parents had reportedly flooded the city with more than 100,000 bus-related complaints as of late September, while stories emerged of kids' hellish bus experiences. One 5-year-old girl was driven around Queens for four hours before she was dropped off in the dark at the wrong stop, the New York Post reported.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza apologized for the problems at an Education Committee hearing Tuesday. He said he's ordered an outside audit of the DOE's bus contracts by Ernst & Young, and the Office of Pupil Transportation, which oversees busing, was recently brought under his direct supervision.

"I guarantee you we are going to get to the root cause and we are going to fix this system," Carranza told lawmakers. "It is unacceptable that at the beginning of the year there is an acceptance and an acquiescence to the fact that busing will be horrible for a few days. That's just not OK."

The Office of Pupil Transportation contracts with about 65 companies to provide bus service for about 150,000 students each school year on 8,500 routes using 9,000 vehicles staffed by 14,000 drivers and attendants, said Kevin Moran, the newly tapped senior adviser to the chancellor for transportation.

The $1.2 billion system depends on decades-old contracts with companies that have alleged ties to corruption and organized crime, according to the New York Daily News. And the paper last month found at least half a dozen bus drivers who were allowed on the job even though they had criminal histories, including several DWIs.

In addition to the audit of the contracts, Moran said the Office of Pupil Transportation now plans to slap failing contractors with penalties starting on the first day of school rather than give them a two-week grace period. The office has also launched a Twitter account, @NYCSchoolBuses, to provide real-time updates for parents.

But the Council apparently doesn't want to leave anything to chance. In addition to mandating that each bus be outfitted with GPS trackers and a cellphone or two-way radio, the slate of eight measures — known as the Student Transportation Oversight Package, or STOP — would require reporting from the Department of Education on several bus-related topics, including average transportation times; the number of vehicles, staff, routes and delays; and the number of complaints and investigations into drivers each quarter.

Legislation would also force the DOE to make bus routes public at least a month before school starts and distribute a "school bus bill of rights" to students.

While he thanked Carranza and Moran for acknowleding the busing failures, Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the system still struggles with "preventable delays."

"The recent issues we have seen, with buses failing to show up and students left stranded hours on end, are terrifying, especially for students with disabilities and very young children," Johnson said in a statement. "What a horrible way to start the year for these kids and families."

(Lead image: School buses are seen in Queens in February 2013. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)