{"id":22218,"date":"2025-10-30T04:39:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/22218\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T04:39:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:39:06","slug":"new-york-city-public-school-bus-drivers-parents-pack-meeting-as-contract-negotiations-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/22218\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City public school bus drivers, parents pack meeting as contract negotiations continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City Public Schools have until Saturday to reach an agreement with its bus companies<\/a> before risking service disruptions. If buses stop running, 150,000 students will be impacted.<\/p>\n

A meeting to discuss their contract made little progress Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

No vote on new contract<\/p>\n

Hundreds of bus drivers and parents packed into a Hell’s Kitchen auditorium for the hours-long meeting, where anger and frustration boiled over.<\/p>\n

To their disappointment, the Department of Education’s Panel for Education Policy did not vote on a new contract.<\/p>\n

If a deal is not signed by Nov. 1, the bus companies warn of service disruptions for students and mass layoffs for drivers as soon as Monday. \u00a0<\/p>\n

“We feel we are pawns in the middle of these negotiations, losing our jobs in the process,” one bus driver said.<\/p>\n

“We are working hard to serve your children safely and reliably, but we have been left out of many important conversations that directly impact families and our employees,” said the executive vice president of Logan Bus Company.<\/p>\n

“We’ll lose our job. We’ll lose our health insurance. And we have a lot of men and women that rely on this job,” school bus driver Antoinette Giordano said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Parents, advocates say students need better service<\/p>\n

These bus companies collectively drive 150,000 students daily, 68,000 of whom are students with disabilities, in temporary housing or in foster care.<\/p>\n

“It’s so important that these staffing shortages change and that the bus routes are improved so that students, all students, and especially students with disabilities, are getting where they need to go,” one speaker said.<\/p>\n

Some parents and advocates say a new contract must improve service for students.<\/p>\n

“Families often call us to say that there’s no route for their child, that it’s inconsistent, getting their child to school late or picking them up early,” another speaker said.<\/p>\n

While negotiations continue, the city DOE is preparing to offer families free OMNY cards and prepaid ride-shares, among other options, to transport kids to school in the event of bus service disruptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Public Schools have until Saturday to reach an agreement with its bus companies before risking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,3059,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-22218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-new-york-city-public-schools","13":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}