Gotta bus our humps for fix
Pols feel pressure over crisis
The city’s student transportation system is busted.
Dozens of families, advocates, educators and elected officials turned out for a tense City Council hearing Tuesday on the crisis that has engulfed the public schools’ yellow bus system since classes began Sept. 5.
Brooklyn Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Bensonhurst) scheduled the oversight hearing on the Education Department’s Office of Pupil Transportation following a series of Daily News reports that exposed massive delays and no shows in the bus system — and exposed rampant complaints about the hiring of drivers with serious criminal records.
Treyger, who’s chairman of the City Council Education Committee, cited a News story on a four-hour yellow bus hell ride faced by an autistic fourth-grader from Queens in his opening remarks, in which he said the city’s yellow bus service has hit a new low.
“This is the worst year yet; there is a high rate of delays,” said Treyger. “We have to do better.”
Treyger related his own encounter with a kindergartner from Manhattan — who was let off her bus at the wrong stop three times at the beginning of the last school year — as part of his education in the city’s long struggle to get students to school.
“Citywide, these incidents happen to thousands of students who are negatively impacted by the negligence of DOE and OPT,” Treyger said.
Speaking before a packed crowd in Council Chambers in City Hall, Treyger cited stats showing the city school bus helpline received nearly 130,000 complaints calls during the month of September alone, an increase of about 20,000 calls from the same period last year.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza vowed to do better in his testimony at the public hearing, promising to overhaul the city’s long-troubled, $1.2 billion yellow bus system.
“The busing issues and delays families experienced during the first weeks of school, most notably in District 30 in Queens, were unacceptable, and I apologize to all students and families who were affected,” Carranza said.
Even before the hotly anticipated hearing got underway , protesters gathered on the steps of the city Education Department headquarters to call for improved service, and Treyger led a press conference at City Hall in support of legislation to improve service.