School bus service is already rough in NYC. It could get worse.

As an academic studying international law, climate change and human rights, Ladan Mehranvar is accustomed to navigating complex issues. But she said nothing prepared her for the challenge of getting her daughter, who has a seizure disorder, onto a New York City school bus.

“Sometimes I just sit and cry,” she said. “I feel like I have no control over it.”

Mehranvar said her daughter’s bus schedule is inconsistent. And the routes are inefficient, stretching from 90 minutes to nearly two hours each way from her Upper West Side home to a special education program in Queens. Meanwhile, the longer her daughter is stuck on the bus, the more vulnerable she is to seizures.

“It’s just excruciating,” Mehranvar said.

In a statement, education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said bus staff are committed to transporting Mehranvar’s daughter, and all students, to school safely.

“We are proud to serve over 145,000 students via more than 10,000 buses every school day,” Lyle said. “Thanks to the dedication and hard work of our bus drivers and transportation team, this bus has been consistently arriving on time to school."

Still, horror stories about the city’s school bus system are an annual rite of the back-to-school season, particularly for students with disabilities who must be taken to specialized programs throughout the five boroughs and in the suburbs.

But as school bus contracts are set to expire at the end of this academic year, parents worry even bigger disruptions to the beleaguered school bus system are on the horizon. A long-standing practice in the city’s school bus industry ensures veteran drivers have job protection. But a ruling by the state’s highest court invalidated that practice, and now education insiders fear another strike could be looming.

“New York City is between a rock and a hard place,” Glenn Risbrook, who oversees student transportation for New York City Public Schools, said at a City Council hearing last week.

Outdated contracts

Parents, advocates and city officials say the problem is rooted in antiquated bus company contracts that stretch back 45 years.

Risbrook said officials don’t want to rebid the contracts until a change is made to state law allowing labor protections for drivers.

“The state can help us,” he said.

Bus driver unions argue new contracts must maintain what's known as the Employee Protection Provision as an incentive to retain drivers. The provision ensures veteran drivers are prioritized for new routes – while maintaining their wages and benefits – even if their companies shut down.

But guaranteeing the Employee Protection Provision is costly. And in 2011, New York state’s highest court ruled that new contracts could not include it. So New York City has simply been extending old contracts that already included that provision.

New York City's public school bus system is one of the largest in the world. But its vulnerabilities were laid bare during the previous school year. Although a strike over negotiations between the drivers’ unions and private school bus companies was averted early in the school year, disruptions caused by the threatened job action contributed to widespread delays to pickups and drop-offs.

City officials and parents argue that without rebidding contracts, there isn’t enough competition to incentivize better service.

Plus, the old contracts don’t reflect how students’ needs have changed over the years. For example, there’s no bus service for kids who attend after-school programs or the free summer program Summer Rising.

“A lot has changed in 45 years,” Risbrook said.

Education officials want state lawmakers to pass legislation that grants the city permission to include the Employee Protection Provision in school bus contracts. Lawmakers introduced a bill to do just that in the last legislative session, but it did not pass. In the meantime, the education department is planning for another short-term extension on the old contracts.

A bus driver shortage

Meanwhile, school districts across the country are struggling to hire bus drivers. Experts said the demand for jobs with low pay and odd hours has plummeted, especially now that school bus companies are competing with the explosion of driver jobs from private-sector companies like Amazon. In New York City, officials said, there’s a shortage of 300 bus drivers, making it difficult to staff new routes or even cover existing ones when many employees are out sick.

Sara Catalinatto, co-founder of the advocacy group Parents to Improve School Transportation, supports new contracts that include the labor provision, but said it’s not enough.

“I’m not enthusiastic that just having a new contract in and of itself is going to fix those things,” she said.

She said the city needs to invest in new technology to improve the routes for students, especially students with disabilities who face longer rides with paraprofessionals and nurses. She is also advocating for more training for potential drivers, including apprenticeships for current public school students who might be interested.

“They've done it for hospitality, they've done it for transit. Why not do it for the yellow bus?” she said. “You’re driving a big old hunk of metal but you still could be kind of nurturing because you're working with kids. So it's got the best of all of that.”