Downtown parents complain that substitute school bus drivers regularly get lost for hours in Lower Manhattan’s labyrinthine streets, and the city ignores the problem.
BY COLIN MIXSON
The city’s logs show a sterling record for Lower Manhattan’s M1478 school bus route to Peck Slip School, which notes only two delays so far this school year, each less than 45 minutes, and both due to mechanical issues, according to the Department of Education.
But those ledgers are wildly out of synch with the experience of Downtown parents, who claim that for weeks bus drivers ran severely late on a regular basis, and that on one occasion this year — of which the city has no record — a wayward substitute driver ended up taking students as far north as Hell’s Kitchen on a trip that left kids more than an hour and a half late to class, according to one Battery Park mom.
“They only have two on record as late?” said an incredulous Stacey Vasseur, whose 9-year-old son attends fourth grade at Peck Slip. “That’s a problem.”
Busses along the M1478 route were 30–40-minutes late on a twice-daily basis for nearly six weeks at the beginning of this school year — in part due to the heavy traffic, construction, and narrow streets along the labyrinthine Downtown route — but also as a result of poor planning by the city, according to another mom.
“It was very unplanned,” said Maria Widelko, whose 7-year-old daughter takes the bus. “The route didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t efficient, and it was inconvenient to parents.”
It didn’t help that three weeks in the Office of Pupil Transportation, which oversees city school buses, conducted a so-called “Priority Driver Pool,” and a new driver was installed along the route, according to Vasseur.
The problems with chronic delays have since been ironed out, with the current driver, who parents say is well respected and on time, but throughout the weeks-long ordeal, neither the school nor the OPT made any effort to keep parents appraised of delays, despite repeated calls to both parties requesting updates and improvements, Vasseur said.
“The school told us to call OPT, so every time the bus was late, every morning and afternoon, we called and got a case number, but it wasn’t improving,” Vasseur said. “I think there’s a disconnect. In my opinion, there didn’t seem to be a sense of urgency about all these parents waiting for buses for weeks to get it right.”
If the driver gets lost on the way to school, parents usually only find out how late the bus was from their kids.
On Sept. 27, for instance, Vasseur waited 40 minutes for the bus to arrive for pickups in Battery Park City, but then the substitute driver got hopelessly lost in an odyssey that took the Downtown youngsters as far north as W. 46th Street, before arriving at Peck Slip School more than an hour and a half late, when there were no adults outside to greet them.
And the parents would have been none the wiser if Vasseur’s kid hadn’t mentioned seeing the Intrepid aircraft carrier on his way to school — an odd site for student heading crosstown from Battery Park City.
“We wouldn’t have known,” said Vasseur. “This time I was like, ‘Wow, this is a problem.’”
Now parents live in constant fear that their kids’ next ride to school will be with a substitute driver, and if the driver gets lost, they won’t have a clue, according to one Battery Park City mom.
“This is the nightmare that I am dreading,” said Galit Bartleson, whose 8-year-old daughter uses the route. “A school bus driver needs to know their route — that’s all they need to know — and if the bus doesn’t arrive, there’s no checks and balances.”
Parents along the route have done their best to take matters into their owns hands, circulating a contact list with numbers for moms, dads, and the route’s current bus driver in an effort to make sure everyone stays abreast of any delays that occur, according to Widelko.
“We feel like we have to be on top of it and communicate with each other in order for us to have an efficient way to get our kids to school on time,” the Battery Park City mom said.
