Staten Island mom Lauren Reinero was stunned when her three-year-old special needs son, Louis, got off the bus from his second day of summer school — soaked from head to toe.
“He was drenched in sweat,” she said, adding that his cheeks were beet red. “He looked like he was drugged — out of it.”
After learning that the air conditioning on the bus had broken, Reinero noticed that the windows on the bus were all shut.
Her son’s bus ride home was a hellish one-hour and five minutes.
“It was 90 degrees outside,” she said. “I was livid.”
Reinero’s son attends a pre-school for children with autism and special needs.
The city Department of Education, which contracts with bus companies to transport the kids, is legally required to ensure that all the buses for special-ed kids have A/C, but that hasn’t happened.
Danielle Napoli, also of Staten Island, said her three-year-old son, Matteo, who has cerebral palsy, gets off a 90-minute ride home from Gingerbread Learning Center, a school for special-needs kids, soaking wet and “a little loopy.”
“The bus has no air conditioning working,” she said “My son gets off everyday like he just got out of the pool. Soaked in sweat! So so hot. he’s out of it — fallen asleep.”
Both children ride on buses run by Island Charter, which has 55 summer routes for the DOE.
After inquiries by The Post, the DOE said it told the company that if kids aren’t kept cool— it’ll be in hot water with the city.
“Students deserve a safe and comfortable ride to school, and both of these incidents were immediately addressed this week,” said spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.
With heat soaring, the DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation has received 4,271 complaint calls so far this summer, down from 5,150 at the same time last year, Barbot said.
She would not describe the types of complaints, or say how many related to non-working or non-existent A/C.
She said OPT started using new “temperature guns” in June for the bus vendors to report any problems this summer. She did not give data on inspections or violations.
Island Charter could not be immediately reached.
