{"id":374831,"date":"2026-10-16T14:32:50","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374831\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T14:32:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:32:50","slug":"nyc-school-officials-could-not-locate-brooklyn-bus-with-six-nonverbal-children-for-hours-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374831\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC school officials could not locate Brooklyn bus with six nonverbal children for hours: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brooklyn yellow bus<\/a> with six nonverbal children went missing for more than four hours last school year, raising alarm for their safety and prompting a report to the NYPD, according to the watchdog agency for New York City\u2019s public schools.<\/p>\n

The elementary students, ages 6 to 8, were scheduled to be dropped off at P.S. 289 The Brower School in Crown Heights<\/a> on Dec. 16 between 8:20 and 9 a.m., said the Special Commissioner of Investigation.<\/p>\n

But the bus allegedly did not arrive until 1:25 p.m., after school officials, despite their best efforts, were unable to locate the children.<\/p>\n

Investigators said one young girl urinated on herself, the report notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is highly disturbing that six nonverbal children were left on a school bus for hours while their whereabouts remained unknown to school officials,\u201d Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman<\/a> said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese particularly vulnerable students rely on the adults entrusted with their care to ensure their safety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The findings come as the city\u2019s school system faces intense pressure to fix school bus services, especially for tens of thousands of students with disabilities<\/a> who rely on transportation provided by city contracts to get an education. More than 80,000 school bus delays were reported during the 2023-24 school year, according to Advocates for Children of New York, an organization that advocates for improved bus service.<\/p>\n

SCI recommended that \u201cproblem codes\u201d be associated with two employees involved in the mishap employed by Consolidated Bus Transit, a yellow bus vendor for the city\u2019s schools, so the individuals will be barred from supervising students in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The special commissioner launched its probe into Consolidated bus driver Eric Chery and matron Germina Thomas last year after the office received a complaint based on allegations by a mom of two impacted students with iTags in their backpacks. Both Chery and Thomas were on temporary assignment that day, according to a June 30 SCI memo to the chancellor.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth employees have been on administrative leave since the incident 10 months ago, pending investigation proceedings, as required by the labor collective agreement,\u201d said a Carolyn Daly, a spokesperson for Consolidated. \u201cThey are not permitted on any of our buses and have no student interface or interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative for the labor union that represents school bus drivers and matrons did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

At 10 a.m., about an hour after the scheduled arrival time, the school tried to call Consolidated but got no answer, according to a SCI news release. Shortly before 12 p.m., a dispatcher allegedly told the school that the driver was lost but less than 15 minutes away, but it would be nearly two more hours until the students finally arrived.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the school notified the Education Department\u2019s student transportation office of the bus\u2019s disappearance, which was reported to the NYPD, investigators said.<\/p>\n

One student was found wet and lying down on a bus seat after she urinated on herself and removed her own diaper and leggings, according to the news release. The soaked diaper was reported to be discovered on the floor of the school bus.<\/p>\n

Thomas, who had worked as a bus matron for nearly two decades, told investigators that she did not speak with Chery during the multi-hour drive for reasons SCI did not explain in the news release or memo. She also allegedly did not attempt to contact the school or bus depot.<\/p>\n

Chery told SCI he had been working at Consolidated for less than three months on the date of the incident, living in New York City for a \u201cshort time,\u201d and was not fluent in English.<\/p>\n

GPS tracking data obtained by investigators also showed the bus was still at one student\u2019s address shortly before 11 AM, even though the driver claimed all students had been picked up an hour earlier, according to the release. Chery said he went to two wrong school addresses before dispatchers helped guide him to the right one.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery child, including those with special needs, deserves safe, reliable, and timely transportation to school, and SCI will continue investigating failures that put student safety at risk,\u201d Coleman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brooklyn yellow bus with six nonverbal children went missing for more than four hours last school year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,67,85,267,9,24,264,12,63],"class_list":["post-374831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374831","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=374831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}