Maria Fazio spends most mornings at work watching a purple dot move slowly through a map of Brooklyn on what she and other parents of Sterling School students call “the cursed route.”

That dot is a tracking device inside her 9-year-old son Antonio’s backpack. It monitors his trip aboard a yellow, city-funded school bus that travels from Fazio’s home in Bergen Beach, to Sheepshead Bay, Flatbush and Brownsville, before reaching his school in Brooklyn Heights, which serves children with dyslexia . Door-to-door, the trip is only 7 miles. But it can take three hours each way.

Fazio said Antonio frequently misses first period, which is dedicated to one-on-one literacy instruction.

“That’s the reason why we send him there, and [he’s] missing that hour,” she said.

Complaint records filed wit

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