Left Behind: How school buses disadvantage NYC students with disabilities

“Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox. Constant delays. No-shows. Missed class. Roughly 145,000 New York City students, 43% of whom have disabilities, rely on yellow bus service to get to school each day. It’s a sprawling system with 9,000 routes operated by more than 50 different companies at a cost of more than $2 billion a year. But sometimes, the buses don’t arrive at all. Parents are often unable to track buses or contact busing companies, forcing many families to pay out of pocket for cabs or keep their kids home from school. P.S. Weekly producers Noa Salas Adam, a junior at Stuyvesant High School, and Katelyn Melville, a rising sophomore at City College, explore the challenges faced by students with disabilities who rely on busing, including academic setbacks, missed time with friends, and lack of access to OMNY cards to commute to jobs or after-school programs. Lucas Healy, a senior with autism at Brooklyn’s High School of Telecommunication Arts & Technology, opens up about missing class because of unreliable busing and the emotional toll it’s taken, which still affects him today. His mother, Paullette Ha-Healy, shares her experiences navigating limited options when the bus didn’t arrive, and her frustrations with the Office of Pupil Transportation overseeing the Education Department’s massive transportation system. “I didn’t like it when I was left out,” Lucas said of missing class because of busing. “And because of that, I felt lonely because I wasn’t there, and it’s definitely not fair.” The Education Department has said some fixes are on the horizon: The city is promising upgraded software by September that will create shorter and more efficient routes. Officials pledged to release bus vendor “scorecards” in June, rating bus companies on various metrics, including driver safety and bus breakdowns. P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell . It’s available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify . Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. New episodes drop on Thursdays. P.S. Weekly is made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

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