City education officials on Tuesday outlined a series of reforms to overhaul bus service for pupils, including plans to improve routes, solicit more feedback from parents, and analyze contracts with private bus companies.

The changes were announced in a hearing on City Hall addressing poor service that marred the beginning of this school year. Many students had to wait a long time to be picked up in the morning and spent hours getting home in the afternoon. 

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza repeated an apology to parents for the poor service.

“It is unacceptable that at the beginning of the year there is an acceptance and an acquiescence to the fact that busing will be horrible for a few days,” Carranza said at a City Council committee hearing on the subject, promising a more streamlined and efficient system when schools open next year.

To those ends, the Department of Education will create a new position for a routing manager, who will design more efficient bus routes, and will seek feedback from parents through a survey next year. 

Kevin Moran, the chancellor’s special adviser on transportation, admitted upon questioning from City Council Speaker Corey Johnson that the Department of Education has not been in compliance with a requirement to submit bus service plans to the mayor and the council speaker before the academic year and summer term begins, but Carranza agreed to do so in the future. 

Moran will continue meeting with parents this fall and will be at a town hall in School District 30 on Wednesday, where much of the worst service issues were reported at the start of the school year. 

He told council members that the department has ordered an audit of “all components” of the process through which the city bids out private bus companies.

A spokesperson for Logan Bus Company, which is the largest school bus contractor with the city, told WNYC that he welcomes the audit.

“I think they’ll find that we’re a cheaper priced vendor and we do a great job at what we do,” said Corey Muirhead.

A Logan subsidiary, Grandpa’s Bus Company, was singled out this year for poor performance after some students on its routes said drivers asked them for directions and went the wrong way down one-way streets. Muirhead called those problems "an anomaly."

There may be more transparency around the investigation of complaints about drivers and what services students should expect if a slate of legislation from City Council members passes. 

One of the measures would require drivers to be reachable by phone or radio or that buses be equipped with a tracking device. 

"Half the time you call the bus company and they never answer," Gloria Corsino, a mother of two special needs students, said when asked about the challenges of tracking her sons' school bus. 

This summer, the Department of Education piloted a GPS app along 20 routes with plans to expand the initiative by the spring of 2019. 

For Corsino, who offered feedback on the app to education officials, the new technology would be a game-changer. "If you have it on your phone, at least you can see an estimated time of how far away your child is." 

She said that getting information about delays now can require a series of time-consuming calls and emails to bus companies, school supervisors, and the education department's Office of Pupil Transport. 

“It’s only word of mouth, parent to parent, that we know the very limited rights that we can try to enforce with the school bus,” said Sara Catalinotto of the advocacy group Parents to Improve Student Transport. That’s especially true, she said, for parents of students with disabilities.

Students with special needs comprise two-thirds of the 150,000 students who ride school buses in New York City.