8 THE QUEENS COURIER • SEPTEMBER 20, 2018 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
DOE reassigns four Queens school bus
routes after pushback from worried parents
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL
DOMENECH
adomenech@schnepscomm.com
@AODNewz
Th e Department of Education (DOE)
has reassigned four Grandpa Bus
Company routes serving children in
Queens to another company.
Stories of children waiting hours at bus
stops, missing early morning classes and
parents missing work in order to bring their
children to school, have been circulating
social media. On the District 30 Education
Facebook page, parents have been demanding
answers and improved service from
the Department of Education (DOE) and
Offi ce of Pupil Transportation (OPT).
Some of the more extreme accounts
include a 5-year-old girl forced to stay on
the bus for four hours and a P.S. 85 father
following the same bus in order monitor
its route.
“I starting following the bus and I started
calling parents,” said Mohammad
Hossain, whose son was not dropped off
at his normal 69th and Broadway stop last
Th ursday.
But Hossain continued to follow the
Grandpa Bus Company school even
aft er his son exited the bus. According to
Grandpa Bus Company, Hossain’s eff orts
to call the bus driver to task frightened the
driver who called the police and said she
felt threatened.
“We had the driver quit the next day
because she feared for her life,” said
Corey Muirhead, director of contracts
and business development at Logan Bus
Company, which owns Grandpa Bus
Company, about the incident. Muirhead
also mentioned that the driver said that
Hossain threatened to shoot her, which
played a role in her decision to resign.
Hossain denies making any threat and
police do not have the incident on fi le.
When asked to release the name of the
driver in order to get comment, he said
he was unsure of the driver’s name and
refused to give any other information. He
was also unsure of the now ex-employee’s
location.
An earlier response to a letter from
Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, the
DOE stated that they “have been working
around the clock to fi x ongoing issues
and delays, including sending staff to the
vendor’s bus depot every school day this
week to confi rm that buses left the depot,
supporting the vendor in reorganizing
their bus yard to be more effi cient, processing
additional driver registration and
making some route adjustments.”
Th e statement, dated Sept. 14, stated
that they had seen improvements. But
Queens parents continued to complain
about the long wait times and continued
delays.
Parents were not going to stop until
the promised quality of bus service was
delivered.
“I want to know the bus driver and at
least Monday defi nitely I am going to follow.
Maybe Tuesday. When I see consistency
then I will say, ‘OK, now I can
relax,’” Hossain said.
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