Parents say special-education students were left waiting after vendor cut minibus routes amid federal CDL ruling

Bridal Chamberlain, vice president of operations for Beacon in Long Island and a We Transport representative, told the Sachem Central School District board that a federal Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) rule change in October and a final ruling on March 16 curtailed nondomiciled drivers’ ability to renew commercial driver licenses, immediately shrinking the vendor’s candidate pool.

"We lost 20% of our trainees overnight," Chamberlain said, describing how the company proposed consolidating routes — from about 125 vans to roughly 105 — to maintain service while recruiting replacements. She said the vendor ran dry runs and would pilot a free GPS app so parents could track vehicles.

Board members and parents at the meeting challenged the communication timeline. "If you knew on Feb. 13 that routes would change, why weren’t families warned earlier so they could plan?" asked one board member. Multiple parents said they received only a vague email two weeks later and sometimes only a voicemail the night before or the morning of a changed pickup time.

Doreen Lerner, a parent of two elementary students, said the impact has been concentrated on mini-bus routes that serve special-education students. "This is not a minor inconvenience" she said; "we are seeing students arrive late, miss mandated services and wait up to 30 minutes after dismissal to be picked up."

Several parents described missed Individualized Education Program (IEP) services and longer-than-usual travel times; one parent said a child’s pickup was moved to 9:15 a.m., far later than the school’s start time, without sufficient notice. Another asked whether the district could re-route larger buses to free drivers for mini-buses; the vendor replied that large-bus routing is performed by the district’s transportation department and that Beacon had already reduced large-bus routes earlier in the year.

District staff said contractual protections exist for missed stops and late arrivals — liquidated-damage provisions they are tracking for the next billing cycle — and that routes removed from service will not be billed going forward. Superintendent staff said they are working with the vendor on a communication protocol and asked the board to allow the district to test the vendor’s GPS app with a small group of parents.

Several board members urged a permanent, district-led notification process rather than relying on drivers to notify families. One member asked the vendor to provide call logs showing which parents were reached; the vendor said it could run call logs but had not been asked to trace every family specifically.

Board members also pressed state-level advocacy: the vendor and several directors said they had lobbied the governor’s office and state education officials for relief and filed industry comments, but that New York had not adopted the temporary nondomiciled reinstatement other states used.

The board directed administration to work with the vendor on a short-term operational patch and bring a community communication plan back to the board at the next meeting. The vendor said it aims to finish dry runs, complete parent calls and implement several fixes on March 13 and thereafter, with a small number of routes still under review.