Council Members Rita Joseph and Julie Won at Monday’s oversight hearing. Photo: Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
Oct. 4, 2024 By Shane O’Brien
Queens Council Member Julie Won co-chaired a joint oversight hearing on Monday exploring how to improve school transportation services, which suffered from a cumulative 80,312 delays during the 2023/24 academic year.
Won, the chair of the New York City Council’s Committee on Contracts, and Brooklyn Council Member Rita Joseph, the chair of the Council’s Committee on Education, led a joint oversight hearing on improving school transportation with a particular focus on improving contracting processes.
Won said New York City Department of Education (DOE) school buses have been subject to the same contracts for more than 40 years, resulting in significant delays in transportation and bus services.
The hearing heard that the city is set to spend $1.8 billion on bus contracts for FY’25, a $200 million increase on FY’24. It also discussed strategies for enhancing service quality, cost-effectiveness and accountability through the upcoming rebidding process.
Won presented data that showcased that there were 80,312 delays during the 2023/24 school year, stating that this contributed to high levels of absenteeism and negatively impacted educational outcomes for students. She said the issue especially impacted students with disabilities and living in temporary housing.
“As significant bus delays continue to create learning disruption, the City Council will continue to provide oversight to address existing issues and work with DOE and Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS) to create more efficient, cost-effective, and equitable transportation for our students,” Won said in a statement.
The DOE is unable to rebid current contracts that stretch back over 40 years due to issues connected to Employee Protection Provisions (EPP).
EPPs, which safeguard workers rights and wages, are not part of New York State legislation, meaning the DOE cannot issue new contracts containing the provisions.
However, older contracts dating back to the 1970s contain EPPs and are not impacted by state legislation, meaning the city has been extending the same contracts for more than four decades because older contracts still contain EPPs.
New York State laws prohibit new contracts from including EPPs, meaning additional legislation would have to be passed in the state legislature for the DOE to be able to issue new contracts containing worker safeguards.
Joseph said in a statement that it was unacceptable that students experience significant delays due to an outdated system of awarding contracts.
“Today’s joint hearing was an opportunity to examine the current system, which has operated under outdated contracts for more than 40 years, and find ways to improve the service quality, transparency, and cost-effectiveness of school bus services,” Joseph said in a statement following Monday’s hearing.
“We owe it to our students and their families to ensure they have a reliable and safe way to get to school every day, and the upcoming rebidding process is a critical step toward that goal.”
NYCSBUS
In 2020, the city established the non-profit New York City School Bus Umbrella Services (NYCSBUS) to oversee school bus operations in the city.
However, Joseph and Won raised concerns about the effectiveness, cost, and lack of transparency of NYCSBUS, which oversees roughly 10% of the city’s school bus routes.
They noted that there is a need to balance the stability of bus vendors with the changing needs of New York’s student population, with the number of students in temporary housing assigned to yellow school buses doubling over the past three years.
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