NYC public school bus delays are getting longer and impacting students with special needs the most
If it feels like your kids' school bus delays have gotten longer over the past few years, you're not imagining it.
CBS News New York found the average delay time last year was the highest in the last seven years, and those delays are affecting students with special needs the most.
Third grader Rebecca Cummins can't pick just one favorite subject. She enjoys social studies, art and reading. But sometimes she misses reading class, which is her first of the day at the League School in Brooklyn.
Margaret Cummins says her granddaughter's bus is late so frequently that she's been using Uber instead.
"She's autistic, and little things could throw off her day. If you're going somewhere and we're not ready, and she's ready, she wants to go. She's dressed in the morning to go to school, and the bus doesn't show up on time. It's a problem," she said.
"This year is really bad"
Data from the City Council shows the total number of delays dropped last year, but the buses that were late were delayed by an average of 41 minutes. That's the longest in the last seven years.
"Just this past school year, extreme delays of more than an hour increased by 26%," New York City Comptroller Brad Lander wrote in a letter to Mayor Eric Adams in July.
The city says the average delay times so far this school year are trending down, but their data shows the total number of delays is now slightly up.
"This year is really bad. For the first two weeks, she hasn't been picked up five times already," Cummins said.
"It's unacceptable"
CBS News New York brought those concerns to Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos.
"Busing continues to be a growth area for us. It's something that we work very, very closely with our parent leaders, and it's unacceptable. Everything you just mentioned is unacceptable," Aviles-Ramos said.
"It's something that we have to do better," said Kevin Moran of the New York City Department of Education.
Right now, bus delay data is reported by bus vendors, leading some parents to question the accuracy. The Department of Education says it will soon allow students to scan on and off their bus using a badge, providing a clearer picture. The department, which provides busing even to some non-public school students like Rebecca, plans to use that data to improve service.
"There are some issues in New York. Rush hour is real. Adding bike lanes and things are real. Reducing traffic and speed is real. Distance and time traveled, the idea is to try to figure out how to reduce that," Moran said.
"It's very stressful"
The City Council found that the vast majority of delays reported last year, about 75%, involved special education students. That's no surprise to Afrah Mohamed, whose 11-year-old daughter relies on the bus to get her to the school that fits her needs. During the entire month of September, Mohamed says her daughter only went to school twice because the Department of Education failed to assign her a bus route. The department offered rideshare services, but Mohamed says they were unreliable.
"Missing almost a month from school is really unacceptable. The pressure I go through every day to try to accommodate for her missing school, doing whatever I can do," Mohamed said.
At the beginning of October, the department finally assigned her daughter a route. But now she says she's also dealing with those lengthy delays – a story the Cummins family says they know all too well.
"It's very stressful, because ... I want her to get to school on time, and I want her to get home on time," Cummins said.
Lander's letter to the mayor also criticized the city's 46-year-old contracts with bus vendors. The comptroller and some City Council members have said rebidding those contracts would lead to improvements, but they first want the state legislators to pass a law protecting bus company employees.