Joint hearing of the NY City Council Education Committee and Oversight & Investigation Committee on School Bus Transportation Service starts at 10 a.m. People can testify in person at City Hall or on Zoom.

Read how to register in advance and/or send written testimony. PIST members and ATU will be among the witnesses.

Monday, October 31, 2022

Halloween rally on school bus route issues

12 noon at Tweed, 52 Chambers St.

Wear a skeleton outfit if able

#WheresMyBus #StillWaiting

(RSVP pistnyc@gmail.com)

lunes, 31 de octubre de 2022

“Halloween Rally”sobre problemas del transporte escolar

12 del mediodía en Tweed, 52 Chambers St.

Use un traje de esqueleto si puede

#DóndeEstáMiBús #AúnEsperando

(RSVP pistnyc@gmail.com)

We spent Saturdays in October meeting wonderful students, parents and other caregivers, school staff and advocates across the boroughs.

Residents of Rockaway gather with other activists for mass transit to connect the borough of Queens with rail lines that were planned years ago and have never come true. PIST volunteer from the neighborhood gave a message emphasizing how long it takes students who live in the borough to get from home to school.

Join our school bus rights contingent in the annual Disability Pride NYC parade on Sunday October 2, 2022.

Details within. Images will be posted after the event.

School bus riders’ families and school bus workers’ families together in the annual NYC Labor Parade to promote the cause of better student transportation. Join us!

Youth are organizing to be able to use the student metrocards later in the evening and on weekends for extracurricular activities, internships and so on. PIST supports this as part of student transportation justice.

Thursday Aug 25, 2022 at 5:00 PM:

Citywide Council for District 75 Busing Committee is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

At and leading up to the August 11 evening meeting of the NYC Panel for Education Policy , we parents and advocates will make statements about the need for better school bus hiring & retention, training, safety, and communication as the PEP discusses a vote on changing regulations for driver & attendant training. You can help!

PIST NYC had a table at the first in-person Disability Unite Festival on July 17, 2022 in Central Park. Lots of people stopped by to describe the state of school busing for their children, good or bad, and took our flyers or signed up to subscribe to our email newsletter. We ran into familiar and new self advocates including Disabled parents whose children take the yellow bus.

See gallery or for more.

Video from Union Square

On Saturday March 19, dozens rallied in Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza Park before marching over the Brooklyn Bridge to the Department of Education (DOE), to highlight the need for systemic reform in student transportation. The crowd of sixty or so included families, groups of paraprofessionals and teachers, several delegates from the largest NYC school bus union, environmentalists, and other advocates. ASL interpretation for the Deaf community was done by Katie Peacock Helde.

Rosa Parks birthday was the occasion for a virtual press conference on the need for a School Bus Bill of Rights

Over 300 caregivers, school staff, elected officials and journalists signed up for a virtual presentation on the fight for student transportation justice. After a slide show, PIST went over the material that is stored at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TKSp0YVRCipSWjBobkV-v2hgRyDaiLzIKYvWXaVNpVg/edit?usp=sharing

Long rides, or not knowing #WheresMyBus, can be scary for kids. In the Halloween season, we demanded more treats than tricks from those who run the school bus system. It was a small but loud delegation of parents outside the Queens building where the Department of Education houses the Office of Pupil Transportation routers and call center. To Haunt OPT for Halloween we had jack o’lantern masks and symbols of both Halloween and Day of the Dead on our signs.