NYC students with disabilities file federal civil rights complaint against public school system over transportation woes

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Seventeen families of students with disabilities are demanding a federal civil rights probe into the city’s public schools alleged routine denial of legally mandated school bus service.
The failure to provide reliable busing and necessary accommodations force students to miss valuable class time and after-school programs, and suffer unnecessarily long commutes, according to the complaint.
“He likes going to school so much,” said a Manhattan mom of an 8-year-old student with autism, who missed weeks of school while waiting for a bus. “He would say, ‘I was supposed to go to school. I want to go to school, Mommy.’ I would say I don’t have the bus.”
“He tried to put his shoes on, his book bag. Got his pens, everything.”
The city has long struggled to provide reliable school transportation to students with disabilities, who make up a disproportionate share of the 143,000 local children eligible for bus services every day.
Some children require matrons or paraprofessionals to supervise physically or medically fragile kids on school buses — staffers that can take a while to put in place. The city is also roughly 500 school bus drivers short of how many it employed before the pandemic, education data show.
The families in the complaint are calling on the school system to more quickly reimburse families who pay out-of-pocket to get their children to school via rideshare, and to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the Education Department’s transportation policies and practices. They also asked for consistent communication with families when their bus is running late.
Some of the students named in the complaint were described as spending hours on buses without air-conditioning or until they urinated or vomited. Parents reported spending hours shuttling their children in cars or on public transit, and at least one father was forced to take time off from work to drive his non-verbal daughter to school each day.
“Our families and students with disabilities have had enough of interminable bus delays, failure to include required accommodations, and rude, unprofessional treatment from New York City DOE staff,” said Andrew Gerst, staff attorney at Mobilization for Justice.
“We have heard these stories for years. It is time for the U.S. Department of Education to ensure that no families of students with disabilities have to suffer this type of treatment again,” he said.
The Manhattan mom tried calling the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation to resolve the busing issue. But because she did not know her son’s bus route number, her attorney said the staffers “did nothing” to fix the problem.
She would end up hiring a babysitter for four weeks that she said cost $800. He could not ride the bus for nearly all of September, according to the complaint.
“Making sure that our students with disabilities receive transportation that meets their needs is critical for New York City Public Schools,” said public schools spokeswoman Jenna Lyle. “We will review the complaint.”

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