Mayor Bill de Blasio has triumphantly hailed the reopening of the city’s public schools Monday as “beautiful” and “wonderful.”

But many families are reporting widespread problems with the school buses intended to transport kids to those school buildings - in some cases, giving up on their child being able to attend their first day of class.

Parents at a Crown Heights elementary school were suddenly informed Monday that routes were cancelled because there weren’t enough drivers after buses never materialized. A bus for kids at a charter school in Maspeth was an hour late to pick them up after dismissal. One boy in Bed-Stuy was brought to his former school by a bus and left there for hours before his frantic parents tracked him down.

Shahnaz Habib, who lives in Flatbush, said her daughter’s bus never even arrived Monday morning to bring her to her elementary school in Crown Heights. Habib's husband tried to take her on a city bus but they witnessed a “massive fight between a passenger who refused to wear a mask and the driver, and it was kind of scary,” Habib said. “So there was just no way to get to school, and they just came home.”

Samantha Schupack’s daughter attends first grade at the same school as Habib’s daughter. They also had to juggle their schedule to get her to school Monday after her bus never showed up—even though both Schupack and her husband work for the Department of Education and need to report to work at the same time their daughter’s schoolday begins.

“We are combining forces with a couple of other families, so people are sharing drop off and pickup. But that's not sustainable for the school year,” Schupack said.

Kate Troy of Jackson Heights said her second-grade daughter was picked up from her charter school in Maspeth an hour after schedule Monday—and she was brought home an hour and 20 minutes after that, on a route that normally takes 20 minutes to drive. On Tuesday afternoon, the bus took 90 minutes to bring her home and her daughter came back in tears, Troy said.

“It feels like an emergency and I feel completely abandoned,” Troy said.

“We apologize that these families experienced these issues and are following up with them to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Katie O’Hanlon of the Department of Education, which contracts with bus companies to provide eligible students with transportation.

New York City usually spends about $1.25 billion dollars every year on providing school bus service for about 150,000 public school students. “We are working closely with companies and families to ensure timely and efficient transportation—anything less is unacceptable,” O'Hanlon said.

First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan told reporters Tuesday that the contracted bus companies had "enough staffing" for the school year. "

"There are always a few problems in the very beginning, but we're so far, we're hearing very good things in general, but we will reach out to every single bus company. Everyone has enough staff," Fuleihan said.

But the Daily News reported that bus companies themselves say they're facing driver shortages with competition from Uber and other companies: "As the Mayor and (Department of Education) have been fully aware for months, the nation is experiencing severe driver shortages as the pandemic continues and New York City is no exception,” said Carolyn Daly, a spokeswoman for the New York City School Bus Coalition, told the Daily News.

The head of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, which represents 8,000 bus drivers, told the Daily News that he believes there's a shortage of about 200 drivers.

NeQuan McLean, a Bed-Stuy parent who is part of the Community Education Council for District 16, said the chaos led to his second-grader being dropped off at his former school Monday for two hours, while his current school called his parents about his absence. They frantically looked for their son until they finally got in touch with the former school’s administration who confirmed he was there.

“So my baby was in a school for two hours. When we think he's at one place, he's there,” McLean said. NY1 reported a similar situation played out for a Staten Island family who tracked down their missing seven-year-old daughter bussed to her old school Monday through a GPS tracker slipped into her shoes.

McLean said his son's former school said they didn’t contact him because his son was still on the roster there. “That's not acceptable,” McLean said.

Habib said trying to speak to the bus company for her daughter’s school got her nowhere.

“They gave us the runaround,” Habib said. “After you wait for like hours, you can only talk to them, and they give you a case number and then that's it. There's no action taken.”

She’s now hired a $300-a-month private van service to bring her daughter to school.