The day before the start of New York City’s first school bus strike in 34 years, a long yellow bus pulled up at Public School 282 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and the little bodies that popped out could be counted on one hand: Three. The big bus had dropped off part of its cargo earlier, at another school, but in all, 10 children had ridden on a bus fit for about 60.þþA similarly large bus pulled up with 17. Finally, a modern-looking bus whose side panel said it could carry 66 children arrived with its passengers: Five children. þþ“I think in some cases, we have one child on the bus,” said Kathleen Grimm, the city’s deputy schools chancellor for operations. þþThe strike that began Wednesday, which idled more than half of the city’s school buses and forced about 113,000 children to find new ways to school, was prompted by a fight over union jobs. But its true roots are in an attempt to reform one of the most inefficient transportation systems in the country, one that costs almost $7,000 a year for each passenger, an amount so high that many of those children could hire a livery cab for about the same price. By comparison with the next three largest school districts, Los Angeles spends about $3,200, Chicago about $5,000, and Miami, $1,000. þþIn New York, the straightforward task of transporting children to and from school has become a morass of good and bad intentions, shortsighted marketplace policies and outright corruption. þþFor decades, the city has embraced anticompetitive measures and carried on business relations with an array of bus companies, including some that have been implicated in bribery, been under the sway of organized crime and, in one case, run by a man who displayed a pistol at a negotiating session. þþBoth union leaders and city employees have gone to prison for shaking down bus companies, offering in return labor peace, advance notice of inspections or approval of lucrative extra routes. þþEducational policies, driven both by the Bloomberg administration and the federal government, that afford parents greater choice in where to send their children, as well as extended school days, have also helped to drive up costs, in part because of longer distances the buses must travel, along more tailored routes. The special education population has also mushroomed in the last three decades, school officials say, and now represents about a third of the 150,000 students who receive busing, with increasing numbers of them being taken beyond the city’s borders. The city in some cases is constrained by how many of these students can be placed on a bus and for how long, which can drive up the number of routes and costs, city officials said. Busing costs the city $1.1 billion today, compared with $100 million in 1979. þþEfforts to wrestle down the costs have been delayed by the city’s basic needs; a lawsuit; a notorious failed experiment in 2007 when the city tried to revise the busing network in midyear; and an unwillingness to challenge the calcified system that was, in some quarters, popular. þþOn Tuesday, on the eve of the strike, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he wished his administration had begun trying to rein in the out-of-control costs “10 years ago,” but simply could not get to it considering the rest of his mammoth educational agenda. He uttered more self-recriminations after the strike hit at 6 a.m. on Wednesday. þþ“I look back and say we should have tackled this,” he said. þþTo parents, words of regret did little to salve the chaos thrust upon them and their children. þþ“I have to go to work; now I’m late,” Catalina Torres, 51, said as she dropped her three grandchildren at school. Ms. Torres, who works as a teacher’s assistant, considered the prospect of the strike lasting more than a week (the last one, in 1979, lasted three months) and said simply, “Oh my.” þþOutside schools, cars bunched up and blocked the streets at times as parents, navigating the drop-off of their children at school for the first time, jockeyed for space at the curb. The police helped keep traffic moving, and according to the mayor’s office, had to intervene outside the lots of several bus companies whose workers were not on strike, but whose buses were being blocked by picketing union members. Roughly 3,000 of the city’s 7,700 routes were still in operation, those run by companies whose workers are not unionized or not members of the striking Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. þþMany students were late, and attendance was down only slightly citywide, but by more than one-third at special education programs.þ
Source: NY Times
