Chancellor Says He's Aggressively Taking on School Bus Issues

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza says the delayed and missing buses  across the city are “unacceptable” and that he’s aggressively working to remedy the issues.

“We’re taking a real sense of urgency to really get at the root causes of why is it that we have, at the beginning of the school year, such delays and missed routes,” he said.

Across the city, students have struggled to get to and from school, due to several issues: extra-long rides home, drivers who asked them for directions to their school, and buses that simply never showed up.

In response, Carranza fired Office of School Support Service CEO Eric Goldstein, who had supervised the bus system, replacing him with former Staten Island Field Support Executive Director Kevin Moran. Moran will head the Office of Pupil Transportation and report directly to the chancellor through the end of the year.

Carranza also tapped former operations executive Elizabeth Rose to serve as a special adviser focusing on contracts with bus companies.

Some parents whose children have continued to experience long and delayed bus routes expressed skepticism about the personnel shifts.

"I'm not sure that simply shifting around some people and removing one person from OPT is going to make the difference, when it's been a problem consistently,” said Rachel Ford, the mother of 11-year-old Bertram Eagar.

Ford said the school bus never arrived to pick up her son on the first few days of school, and took four hours to transport him from their home in Sunnyside, Queens to school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when it finally did arrive. 

She requested that her son to be assigned to a different bus company — and he was. But that wasn't the end of his problems.

On Monday, Bertram's bus spent nearly an hour idling in front of a school waiting for students from another school to get dismissed and climb aboard. That stop will now be part of his journey home twice a week.

Ford says her son had an “emotional meltdown” by the time he got home. "He was so upset that it took him a while to wind down and be able to focus on things like homework," she said.

Long, unpredictable bus routes have impacted his schooling for the last several years, she added.

Carranza said the issues are being addressed.

"What I don't want to do is put another Band-Aid on anything,” he said. “We're looking at the root causes of everything and we want to make sure that we have a better system that's more responsive to parents and students and is dependable for our community."

Carranza said he’s making sure the seemingly annual flurry of bus delays and lost drivers will not continue into next year.