Less than a month before the first day of class, Schools Chancellor David Banks says the city is staring down the possibility of a school bus strike.

Banks broke the news during a meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council. It comes as the Amalgamated Transit Union is in negotiations with several private companies — and one nonprofit owned by the city — that provide bus service to public school students.

“We do have some immediate concerns, we’re currently negotiating with the ATU around buses, and there’s some real concerns around a potential bus strike which might affect thousands of kids,” Banks told parents on Friday.

The union did not respond to a request for comment, but a recent newsletter posted online earlier this summer said they were fighting to gain back wages and benefits that had been lost, and that workers for at least four companies had voted to authorize a strike.

School buses serve some of the city’s most vulnerable students: those with disabilities, who are typically entitled to pick up at home, students in homeless shelters or foster care, and younger students through grade six who live a certain distance from their schools.

Many parents — like Fatima Prioleau, whose daughter has Down’s syndrome — have already been grappling with problems due to a shortage of bus drivers.

“My daughter’s bus company had doubled up the route so that the bus driver had to take one set of students first, and they came back to take the second set, and that happened in the fall, which meant they were at least an hour and a half late every day,” she said. That snowballed into her missing important services at school because she was late.

The city's Department of Education says it is already working on contingency plans, like offering MetroCards, and reimbursing for or providing free taxi rides.

Sara Catalinotto founded Parents to Improve School Transportation in 2010. That shortens to the acronym PIST, which describes how many school bus parents often feel. She remembers the last school bus strike, in 2013.

“It was the dead of winter, the MetroCard and taxi was pretty much a fail — it doesn’t cover the needs of the majority of these students. They have busing for a reason, just like they may have speech or occupational therapy for a reason,” she said.

She says a fair contract for drivers will also improve conditions for students who depend on them.

"The only acceptable service is a professional, safety-trained driver and an attendant who has had all the training, and we really are gonna have a lot more PIST parents if this is allowed to go to a strike,” she said.