Parents and transportation advocates are fuming as hundreds of students on Staten Island are being left stranded during the school week as they wait for MTA buses that, they say, are either painfully late or do not arrive at all.
Students are stuck waiting up to two hours for MTA buses to pick them up in the morning for designated “school trips,” according to Staten Island parents and community leaders. School trips are bus routes made for middle and high schools to ensure students get to school on time and have a way home outside of regular local bus service.
Students are missing classes
NYC is only about two weeks into the public school year, but parents say they are already fed up with the lack of bus service, which was happening at times last year.
Adrienne Pappalardo-Arroyo’s daughter attends Wagner High School in the borough’s Mid-Island section. On many mornings, the young student waits up to two hours for a bus, often causing her to miss her first-period class.
“In the mornings, she waits an hour or more, but there have been days when she has had to wait up to two hours,” Pappalardo-Arroyo said, adding that she will sometimes have no choice but to walk home and miss school.
Her daughter is typically late four out of five days a week. Sometimes, she will give up lunchtime to sit in on other classes to make up for what she missed in the morning.
“The school does nothing, and we tried to get her schedule changed because she was failing math last year due to her never being there,” the concerned mother said.
Dawn DiGiovanni’s son is also a Wagner High School student. After continuous days of no-show buses, she now drives her son to school.
“I need to make sure he is present for all his classes,” she said. “I can’t have him be late every day and missing classes that cause him to fail.”
Officials at the MTA said they are aware of the problem and working on fixing it.
“We have been notified of concerns parents have…
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