A potential yellow bus strike could leave nearly 14,000 city students without a ride to school Tuesday. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
Hundreds of yellow buses may stop rolling through Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island next week.
The bus owners and the drivers' union have had no contact since the union voted Wednesday night to authorize a strike.
Friday, thousands of students carried home letters from the city Department of Education, saying, "We are deeply concerned about the impact of a strike on your family."
Teamsters Local 553 represents 900 school bus drivers and chaperones. Their contract expires Monday night with the owner of two bus companies, Jofaz Transportation and Y & M Transit.
The union says the most recent contract over is unacceptable.
"We feel that the company can offer more," said Demos Demopoulos of Teamsters Local 553. "And there are some things in there that are very painful to the employees that they haven't had to experience in the past."
That includes giving up holidays in exchange for sick days and paying for part of their health insurance.
Most the students who take yellow buses have special needs, endure long commutes or live in homeless shelters. Advocates are worried a strike would hit the most vulnerable students.
"There are countless numbers of students, kids with disabilities and kids in temporary housing, who will have trouble getting to school, some of whom won't get to school at all," said Maggie Moroff of Advocates of Children of NY.
The Department of Education says it plans to distribute MetroCards and reimburse families for driving, taking a taxi or using a car service. But those options won't work for every student.
"If you have a kid who uses a wheelchair, for example, it may be really, really hard to find a car service that is going to carry them," Moroff said.
The last school bus strike was in 2013 and lasted a month. It involved a different union and impacted 100,000 students. Attendance was way down among the affected students during the strike.
Both the city and federal monitors have stepped in to try to mediate a deal, hoping to get the bus company and union to sit down Monday to keep the yellow buses rolling on Tuesday.