Queens has the highest student MTA bus ridership of all five NYC boroughs, yet (as in most urban-planning projects) students and youth are not included in the MTA's Queens Bus Network Redesign process. Students should not be excluded from decision making that impacts their access to education and the city. Youth, as non-professional active bus riders, can contribute localized, grounded knowledge and wisdom that breaks free from embedded "professional" techniques and perspectives. Public transportation is crucial for low-income students' access to educational opportunities and has implications for equity, student success, and community well-being. The group thesis RE-ROUTE! offers an online workshop facilitation guide to effectively engage middle and high school students, especially those from low-income or transit-poor neighborhoods, to gather insights on their transportation needs. We analyze MTA's engagement process through the "Democracy Cube" framework of participatory design (Fung 2006) for establishing a set of recommendations to create an ecology of inclusion and participation for students. For the scope of the first pilot, we have identified Rockaway, Queens, as our site of investigation, which is one of NYC's least accessible districts, having the nation's highest commute times. View our full thesis on Issuu: issuu.com/maanasa/docs/re-route_upload.