Bus boss ‘driven out’
Resigns from schools post amid student transport crisis
A top city Education Department official tasked with fixing the city’s school bus crisis was pushed out of her job even as dozens of added routes go unstaffed, according to sources in city government and the yellow-bus companies.
Former Deputy Schools Chancellor Elizabeth Rose resigned Friday from her post as “senior transportation contracts adviser,” where she’d been reassigned just two weeks earlier as service and safety scandals engulfed the city’s $1.2 billion yellow-bus system.
Sources with knowledge of the situation said Rose was pushed out of her $197,425 job – but school officials said she voluntarily quit.
In a goodbye letter sent to her colleagues, the nine-year veteran of the city’s school system said she didn’t have another job lined up.
“I have served under five chancellors, and am proud of the work my teams and I have accomplished,” said Rose in the note, which was first published on the NYC Public School Parents blog. “I have decided it is time to leave the DOE, both to spend additional time on some personal needs, and to figure out my next adventure.”
Rose had been demoted to CEO of school operations in August from her previous role of deputy chancellor, where she oversaw major projects, such as universal free lunch, rolled out by then-city Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
After her demotion and reassignment, Rose finalized emergency extensions for transportation contracts held by yellow-bus companies that were widely blamed for delays and no-shows at the start of the school year.
Those contract extensions – which are retroactive to the start of the current school year — will be voted on by the Mayor’s Panel for Educational Policy on Oct. 30.
People with knowledge of the situation said Rose had been given a two-week ultimatum when she was reassigned to the bus contracts role Sept. 22.
“They gave her two weeks to find another role within DOE or leave,” said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They’re pushing her out.”
Rose’s departure came as city Education Department officials struggle to address problems in the bus system.
Bus company executives say a shortage of drivers has prohibited the industry from providing service on dozens of routes proposed by the city since the start of the school year.
Education Department officials couldn’t immediately say how many routes were affected, but bus company execs said it could be more than 100.
Education Department officials said that every city student is assigned to an active and staffed route.
Rose is the second top official to leave the Education Department since problems with the yellow-bus system erupted at the start of the school year, generating more than 105,000 calls to the city’s help line.
Amid the shakeup, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza installed a new bus czar, longtime city educator and administrator Kevin Moran, who’s become Carranza’s senior adviser on transportation tasked with fixing the yellow-bus system.
Carranza thanked Rose for her service in an official statement issued at the time of her departure.