A Brooklyn family wants answers after years of dealing with unreliable school bus service.

They say it takes four to five hours per day for their developmentally disabled child to get to and from school.

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"It's tough. It's tough on him. It's tough on us"  

On the day CBS News New York spoke to him, Antonio Fazio didn't look like it but was relieved to finally be home. The trip from the Sterling School in Cobble Hill to his house in Bergen Beach took a little over two hours.

The fourth grader, who has ADHD, anxiety, and dyslexia, is enrolled in an Individualized Education Program at the Sterling School, which was created for students with language-based disabilities. However, his parents say he sometimes misses the one-on-one literacy instruction first thing in the morning because he's getting to school late.

"The whole reason we send him to this school is so he can get this instruction," Maria Fazio said.

"It's tough. It's tough on him. It's tough on us," father Frank Fazio said.

The boy's parents say the school bus tasked with transporting him to and from school has about a dozen pickups along its route. Maria Fazio said sitting on the bus for more than 90 minutes is illegal.

"In my case, hopefully they follow his IEP, which says he shouldn't be on the bus with more than five children, to alleviate the length of time that he's traveling," Maria Fazio said.

Antonio's parents say they constantly have to adjust their schedules around their son's pickup and drop off. Maria Fazio is a teacher, so her schedule is a bit more rigid. Frank Fazio is a firefighter who works the opposite shift and has to constantly say no to overtime.

DOE's response   

A representative from the Department of Education says it has a network of 9,000 routes that transport 150,000 students throughout the city, and, "While almost all of our students receive quality, on-time service every single day, we take every individual report seriously and are actively looking into this incident so that we can address it appropriately."

The DOE suggests families refer complaints to its call center, but the Fazio family says they have been sending emails and filing complaints with the City Council education chair, and DOE Office of Pupil Transportation for the two years Antonio has been at his new school -- to no avail.

"We've called OPT. We've filed complaints. We have multiple incident reports. We have multiple threads with staff members at OPT and DOB. Nothing gets done," Maria Fazio said.

After we looked into the issue, she later said her son made it to school in record time, which was about an hour. 

CBS News New York also reached out to the City Council education chair, but did not immediately hear back. The bus company, Y&M Transit, declined to comment.