What has been done about hot school buses?
Child’s drawing of a school bus, with talk bubbles outside to depict a dialogue happening inside.
Person 1: Why are we on the Equator? My school is in New York, not South America!
Person 2: We are in New York, we just don’t have any air conditioning.
Person 1: We’re NOT on the Equator?!
Signature in top right: K. Stevens July 2013 - At that time the artist was in a public school inclusion class for Autism (ASD NEST)
Update as of Aug 3, 2023
No more 100+ degree school buses!!
Parent leaders did a surprise bus temperature check at Ed Park Campus in Co-op City, the Bronx on Friday July 28. This led to some discussion on “X” which caught media attention.
Check out the quotes from PIST founder & bus parents across the boroughs at https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2023/8/3/23818044/nyc-school-bus-heat-wave-air-conditioning-iep-disabilities
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Advice about hot buses
In late May, City council passed Local Law 556 to require AC buses - but only for students with IEP busing, and only effective 9/1/2035.
Whether or not your student has the IEP accommodation of an air conditioned bus, you should complain if the vehicle is as hot or hotter than outside!! This is bad for the health and safety of riders, and of the workers who are there twice or 3 times as long.
Call OPT (718) 392-8855. Press option 5. Report a hot school bus and get a ticket number. Pressure is needed to get the older buses replaced earlier than the absolute legal deadline of 2035, which is AFTER most of today's riders finish high school!!
Something that seems to help is to get incident numbers by phone, but then have one of the advocates listed in tinyurl.com/PISTAdvice write an email to the OPT leadership listing those numbers, and copy the others including PIST. And/or tag @nycschools on Twitter/X.
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—This concludes the update —
See summer 2022 article at https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/nyc-students-stuck-on-hot-school-buses-during-heat-wave
A volunteer mom has translated it into Spanish which we have with the same photos at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y4QviCbLnqBAUzF0o5XmBS3vhl3VIQC4bXKsUX11Huo/edit?usp=sharing
STATEMENT ON HOT BUSES July 23, 2022
We at Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST) are definitely receiving complaints about hot school buses, as we do every summer since forming in 2010. It is offensive to us that a city and state which has upgraded the MTA fleets to hybrid and keeps them cool for the tourists, does not automatically do the same for its schoolchildren, even though asthma sufferers comprise 11% of the citywide school body and 17% in the Bronx Disparities among Children with Asthma in New York City. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/epi/databrief126.pdf
It's immoral that when the outside air is 93 degrees F or more, only those students whose families have secured the medical accommodation* of air conditioning on their IEP have a legal recourse against buses that are over 100 degrees inside (* Process = must be approved by the Office of School Health after the parent and a doctor complete paperwork - i.e. Request for Exception to Transportation Rules and Eligibility plus a HIPAA, plus a medical request form that is not posted, and a new meeting must be arranged with a school psychologist to add this enhancement, the IEP written and finalized, and communicated to liaisons at OPT).
Standard size yellow buses and/or those built before 2009 are notorious for lacking the equipment to provide dual air conditioning, and these are the ones that hold higher numbers of students at a time.
A DOE Contracts expert told a public meeting this month [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM-rnXaeRX8&t=21s (~54:00)] that within each of the dozens of company fleets, an individual bus can have a maximum age of 16 years while the maximum age of the fleet must be no more than 12 years. Mathematically one way they can achieve that average is by having half the buses be 16 and the other half 8, in which case half would be structurally incapable of cooling down on a hot day.
Among the reasons why vehicle climate control is especially important for students with physical and neurological conditions:
(a) they are more likely to be mandated for instruction during the hottest months
(b) they are more likely to have long commutes because specialized programs are not found in every zip code https://www.nyappleseed.org/wp-content/uploads/NYA_YellowBusReport_April2022_Final-1.pdf
(c) they may use medication which becomes ineffective — or even unsafe — once the person is overheated.
What we have done about this issue:
Over the years, PIST and other advocates have been part of press conferences at City Hall, a letter to the state Department of Transportation, and a picket line at a bus depot Parents protest hot school buses | | qchron.com The latter was even covered in the Philippines: New York parents demand for airconditioned schoolbuses for their special needs children | GMA News Online
We have tried our best, as a low budget volunteer organization, to inform families of the law (1), their rights/methods to lodge a complaint (2), and any resources we learn of, such as the 2015 distribution of thermometers and temperature logs by then-Public Advocate Letitia James Public Advocate Sues DOE Over Lack of Air Conditioning on Buses for Disabled Students
PIST and other advocates for school bus riders have furthered the cause of replacing outdated diesel and gas buses with cleaner technology by writing to the state in support of the NYC School Bus Umbrella Services (NYCSBUS) grant application for electric vehicles NYSCBUS grant PIST.docx, and joining with environmental and transit advocates to promote a just transition by 2035 https://www.nycschoolbus.org/our-coalition . Our school bus fleet is one of the largest transportation systems in the U.S., so cutting those tons of emissions will ultimately make the planet less susceptible to heatwaves!
PIST organized an event on national annual Transit Equity Day which calls for access, jobs and sustainability in transit on the birthday of Rosa Parks Transit Equity Day: Advocates call for improvements in transit service | PIX11 (00:34 - 01:17)
Last but not least, we are campaigning to place a referendum on the 2023 ballot for a School Bus Bill of Rights Incoming ATU 1181-1061 Head Backs ‘School Bus Bill of Rights’, Calls for Job Protections – LaborPress
The Safety and Health feature of this Bill includes sustainable vehicles and climate control for all. A major goal is changing the governance of student transportation to reflect the communities with a true stake in this service, including the workers/unions who provide it and have to cope with potentially unhealthy conditions for twice as long as the children do.
(1) The law
The City Council addresses this, with $400 penalties for each violation [2006 New York Code - Air-conditioning.] According to an investigation conducted less than 3 years ago, this is clearly not enough to deter companies from putting hot buses on the road; and AC complaints are closed when the company tells OPT that the issue is resolved. https://nycsci.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/Reports/12-19-Hot-School-Buses-Report.pdf
(2) Their rights/methods to lodge a complaint
NEW & Improved School bus tips for 2021-22 Including links about Temporary housing transportation rights
in English at https://tinyurl.com/PISTAdvice
& in Spanish at https://tinyurl.com/PISTConsejo
[update: also see https://www.pistnyc.org/resources/school-bus-complaint-steps
The process for alerting the Office of Pupil Transportation to A/C issues is not user-friendly. We invite anyone who wants to understand the frustration our families have to try calling the OPT 'help desk' at 718 392 8855; listen to the recording and test the options, none of which include AC or heat.
Above is a recording of portions of the phone menu made on the morning of October 11, 2022. Halfway through they admit there is a shortage of school bus staff. Could these hot buses, i.e. unsafe working conditions, be a factor?
We find that the online "support hub" at https://supporthub.schools.nyc/family-topics/Transportation/issues?facetId=ecd6651a-11d5-4cc9-9671-eb903d6df66a is just a high tech version of the same runaround.
Various barriers keep many thousands of families from accessing the online NYCSA account that is necessary for use of the ticket system within. [update: as of Fall 2022, there is no way to create a ticket or inquire directly with the DOE about any school bus route issues except reimbursement and change of PM dropoff; all others direct you to the school or company]
The only bus company which was responsive enough to create its own ticket system for addressing issues such as A/C malfunction on the bus is the one non-profit company, https://www.nycsbus.com/contact.
Since the Department of Education subcontracts yellow bus service to for-profit bus fleet owners (currently 90 percent of vehicles/routes), and then blames that arrangement for their lack of power over conditions and staff shortages, it is no surprise that the quality, training, and comfort levels are inconsistent across the city.