Schoolkids, get ready for a long ride to class next year.
For the third time in two years, the Department of Education is planning to reduce yellow-bus routes for city students, budget documents show.
The reductions planned for September are a bid by officials to cut nearly $7 million a year from the transportation budget.
When routes were last redrawn for general-education kids in January 2007, it was a fiasco – with children stranded at bus stops and 5-year-olds offered MetroCards for city buses.
“They’re going to hear a lot of screaming,” said Robert Caloras, president of the District 26 Community Education Council in Queens.
Several months ago, officials also consolidated hundreds of special-education routes, but were forced to restore many of them after complaints that kids were arriving late to school or enduring very long rides.
Officials said decisions on the changes haven’t been finalized.