Audit Report on the Department of Education’s Oversight of the Qualifications of School Bus Drivers and Attendants Employed by School Bus Company Contractors

We conducted this audit to determine whether the New York City (City) Department of Education (DOE) adequately monitors contracted school bus companies to ensure that the school bus drivers and attendants they employ have undergone required background checks and meet New York State (NYS) and DOE qualifications.

To provide transportation services to students, DOE enters into contracts with vendors—private companies that supply the school buses and employ the drivers who operate them and the attendants who assist the special education students whom they transport[1].   As of November 7, 2016, DOE had 88 contracts with school bus companies that employed, in total, approximately 8,953 bus drivers, 7,082 attendants and 249 persons who were qualified to work as either a driver or an attendant.

DOE’s Contract Management Unit (CMU) is responsible for monitoring school bus vendors’ compliance with DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT) certification procedures and the terms of their contracts.  To keep track of each school bus driver’s and attendant’s certification-status, OPT and CMU use a computerized recordkeeping system, called the Driver and Attendant System.

NYS Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is required to notify the school bus company when the license of a school bus driver that the company employs is revoked or suspended, or when the driver has been convicted of a violation that would prohibit him or her from operating a school bus.   DOE participates in DMV’s License Event Notification Service (LENS), which enables the department to independently track school bus drivers’ license status and ensure that they maintain their eligibility to drive[2].   When a school bus driver’s driving privileges have been suspended by DMV, OPT is notified and the investigator assigned to review LENS notifications reviews the driver’s record on the DMV website and determines whether the issue has been resolved or if the driver remains disqualified.  The investigator is required to update the driver’s status in the Driver and Attendant System.

CMU submits all prospective school bus attendants’ fingerprints to NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) for criminal background checks.  DCJS maintains school bus attendants’ fingerprints on file and notifies DOE’s Office of Personnel Investigation (OPI) if an attendant is subsequently arrested for charged criminal activity.  If the charge is one that would bar the person from working as an attendant, OPI enters a code into DOE’s Personnel Eligibility Tracking System (PETS) indicating the existence of a problem affecting the attendant’s eligibility to work on a school bus for DOE.  Through an automatically-generated email, PETS notifies CMU and OPT that the attendant is suspended from performing services for DOE.  An assigned OPT investigator is required to update the attendant’s status in the Driver and Attendant System.

Audit Findings and Conclusion

This audit found that DOE adequately monitors contracted school bus companies to ensure that the school bus drivers and attendants they employ have undergone required background checks and meet NYS qualification requirements.  Our review found that all of the sampled school bus drivers’ and attendants’ personnel files contained the necessary criminal history clearances, licenses, and certifications to qualify the employees to work on DOE school bus routes.  We also found that those school bus employees had completed certain key annual and biennial requirements needed to maintain certification.

However, the audit found weaknesses in DOE’s follow-up to ensure that the status and eligibility of drivers and attendants is properly updated.  In particular, we found deficiencies in the OPT Investigation Unit’s processing of 10 (23 percent) of the 43 DMV-LENS suspension notifications we reviewed.  In three of those cases, OPT failed to either (1) change the drivers’ status in OPT’s Driver and Attendant System from “active” to “suspended,” or (2) print and file copies of the DMV abstracts showing that DMV had cleared the three drivers’ suspensions.  In the remaining seven cases, the assigned OPT investigators took and documented the necessary action, but did so late—between three and seven business days after DOE received the DMV suspension notifications—rather than immediately as required.

In addition, in our review of 24 PETS suspension notifications, we identified one case where OPT  failed to implement a DOE determination to suspend a school bus attendant’s eligibility to work on school buses for DOE for over six months.  As a result, DOE could not produce a record demonstrating that the attendant’s employment was in fact suspended.

Finally, we found that DOE has no written policies or procedures specifying the responsibilities of OPT investigators in acting upon DMV-LENS and DOE-PETS suspension notifications.  These weaknesses increase the risk that drivers might be operating DOE school buses with suspended licenses and attendants may be assisting children while suspended.

Audit Recommendations

Based on our findings, we make five recommendations, including the following:

• DOE should ensure that OPT’s Investigation Unit creates a written policy and procedure for investigators, specifically delineating the steps that must be completed and the documentation that must be obtained when suspension notifications are issued for school bus drivers and school bus attendants through both DMV’s LENS system and DOE’s PETS system. Appropriate time frames should be established for each required step.
• DOE should ensure that OPT investigators review all LENS and PETS notifications on a daily basis and that a designated supervisor or staff member is responsible for reviewing and ensuring that each notification has been dealt with and documented appropriately.
• DOE should develop and implement procedures to ensure that all PETS suspension notifications concerning school bus attendants are addressed and that any suspension notification not immediately matched with a name or other identifier in OPT and CMU records is investigated until the person named in the notification is conclusively identified as being either an active school bus attendant or not.

Agency Response

DOE agreed with two of the audit’s five recommendations but disagreed with the recommendation that the agency create a written policy and procedure for investigators regarding its receipt of LENS and PETS suspension notifications.  In addition, DOE disagreed with the audit’s recommendations that it ensure that OPT investigators review all LENS and PETS suspension notifications on a daily basis and that it establish a time frame within which all LENS and PETS suspension notifications should be resolved.  DOE argued that those recommendations are unnecessary because sufficient measures are already in place to ensure that its contracted school bus vendors will prohibit school bus drivers from driving with suspended licenses and prohibit attendants from assisting children while suspended.  After carefully reviewing DOE’s arguments, we find no basis for altering our audit conclusions and urge the agency to reconsider its response and implement these recommendations.

[1] Every special education vehicle must have an attendant responsible for assisting students with disabilities during their ride to and from school.  An attendant is also required to assist each child with a disability from the bus to the front door of the school.

[2] LENS is a tool offered by DMV that enables LENS customers to monitor drivers’ qualifications and to receive notifications of any changes to drivers’ qualifications.  The source for LENS drivers’ information is the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles Driving Record.