School bus with six nonverbal students got lost in Brooklyn for over four hours, city investigators say

A yellow school bus carrying six nonverbal special education students wandered Brooklyn for more than four hours on the way to school last December while parents and staff tried to find it, according to findings released this week by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District.

The students, ages 6 to 8, were due at P.S. 289 in Crown Heights between 8:20 and 9 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2025. The bus, run by Department of Education contractor Consolidated Bus Transit, did not arrive until about 1:25 p.m., the watchdog said.

Parents tracked the bus

The investigation began after a complaint about the missing bus. One mother had put tracking devices in her two children's backpacks and could see them moving around Brooklyn instead of arriving at school, investigators said. Gothamist said parents used AirTags to follow the bus's winding route.

School staff called the bus company around 10 a.m. and got no answer, according to the report. At 11:45 a.m., a dispatcher said the driver was lost and would arrive in 15 minutes. The bus showed up an hour and 40 minutes later. The school also contacted the DOE's Office of Pupil Transportation and reported the situation to the NYPD.

When the bus arrived, staff found that one girl had urinated on herself and was lying on a seat, soaking wet, investigators said. The bus matron, who had nearly 20 years on the job, told investigators that some children became agitated during the long ride while others slept. She acknowledged she did not talk to the driver or contact the school, the depot or anyone else for help.

The driver told investigators he stopped at two wrong addresses before the company called with the correct one, Gothamist reported, citing the report. Both workers were fill-ins on the route, and the bus's GPS was "inoperable." GPS records showed the bus was still at one student's home as late as 10:59 a.m., although the driver said he had picked up every child by 10 a.m., the watchdog said.

What happens now

The workers are not city employees, so the watchdog recommended that the Education Department flag both of their names and make every effort to keep them from supervising students in the future. Consolidated Bus Transit said both have been on leave since the incident and are barred from its buses and from interacting with students, ABC7 reported. Education officials told Gothamist the two were suspended right away.

"It is highly disturbing that six nonverbal children were left on a school bus for hours while their whereabouts remained unknown to school officials," Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman said. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who has a child with autism, said the two should never be allowed to care for public school students again.

About 155,000 city students ride yellow buses, and half of them have disabilities, Gothamist reported. Parents have pushed for state legislation that would let the city rebid its decades-old bus contracts with stricter requirements for vendors. Council Member Gale Brewer said in the watchdog's release that about 350 school buses were delayed every day when she held hearings on the issue in 2022.