Michael Mileto gets up at 5:30 every morning and is out the door to catch his school bus by 6:20 a.m. outside his Brighton Beach home. What should be a trip to his Manhattan classroom has instead turned into a grinding, multi-hour slog that now routinely makes him late for his first class of the day.
The eighth grader, who has a speech language disability, attends a private school on Manhattan's Upper East Side at the city's expense, with New York City's Department of Education responsible for getting him there and back. As Spectrum News NY1 reports, his morning bus ride to school now takes two-and-a-half to three hours this school year, and he routinely arrives after the 8:15 a.m. first bell. Last school year, by contrast, he was picked up around 6:45 a.m. and reliably got to school on time at 8:15 a.m.
The difference, according to the report, is that his bus this year also carries children attending a different school in Manhattan, meaning Michael has to be picked up earlier and dropped off later to accommodate the added stops. On one particularly bad day, he didn't arrive at school until 10 a.m. and wasn't dropped back home until 6 p.m.
Missed Lessons and a Tired Student
The extended rides have a direct academic cost. Michael's mother, Annie Mileto, told the station that he misses math, literacy and other main subjects because of the time lost on the bus. “It's ridiculous,” is how the situation was described in the report's own headline, and Michael said the ride makes him miss lessons and rush to catch up once he finally gets to his desk.
He also described feeling tired and drowsy from the early mornings and long rides, all while still facing a full load of homework once he gets home. Still, Michael said he hopes the situation changes soon and thinks the school system should do better by students like him.
A Citywide Driver Shortage
Michael's situation reflects a broader strain on the city's school transportation system. Around 2,000 children lacked an assigned bus driver at the start of this school year, spread across roughly 300 routes without a driver, according to the same NY1 report. The city has responded by offering prepaid rideshare options, buying additional buses and seeking more drivers from bus companies.
Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, said her organization continues to hear from families still without any bus service at all, as well as families reporting more crowded buses and later arrivals. She told NY1 that some routes intended to run separately have instead been combined, which can explain longer rides like Michael's.
Department Says It's Reviewing the Route
A spokeswoman for city public schools said the department takes concerns about long bus routes seriously and confirmed that officials are reviewing Michael's specific route, including GPS data and any delays caused by stops along the way. Separately, the Department of Education has told other outlets that when it is alerted to serious delays or inaccessibility, it immediately investigates and works to fix those cases, according to Gothamist.
The district has also pointed to a shortage of available school bus vendors and rising transportation needs as factors behind some unfilled yellow-bus routes, per CBS News New York. For some families, the department has offered free rideshare vouchers as a stopgap, though parents must ride along with their children to and from school, a requirement that has proven difficult for working parents to manage.
Extreme Delays on the Rise
Michael's hours-long commute fits into a pattern researchers have flagged across the system. Citywide, 65,811 school-bus delays were recorded in a recent school year, a 17% drop from the year before, yet the number of rides exceeding an hour jumped 39% to nearly 20,000, Gothamist's analysis found. In that same year, buses serving students with disabilities accounted for 74% of all delays and a striking 94% of the delays that stretched past an hour.
Heavy traffic remains the most commonly cited reason for delays in the city's own data, Gothamist reported. Advocates and parents have also pointed to a long-running driver shortage tied to the city's outdated bus contracts, which, according to reporting from NY1, have not been rebid since 1979 and are not set to expire until June 2028.
For now, Michael's family is left hoping the review of his route brings a faster fix than the systemic one. Until then, he keeps setting his alarm for 5:30 a.m., bracing for whatever the bus brings that day.
