Two weeks after drastically overhauling city school-bus routes, education officials admitted yesterday they still have no idea how many students lost service – and are revisiting two controversial rules that left kids waiting in the cold to get to school.
Speaking at a City Council hearing on the rerouting, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said he is considering setting an age limit for students who are given MetroCards to get to school.
Klein, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm also said the city Department of Education would scrap a longstanding policy requiring students to live within a quarter-mile of a school-bus stop to qualify for service.
The changes to bus routes were put in place to save money. Officials, acting on the advice of pricey private consultants, claimed the city was paying for buses that were underused and that routes could be consolidated to save millions.
A total of 116 of 2,156 routes were eliminated for a projected annual savings of $12 million, or $5.6 million for the remaining fiscal year. The veracity of both figures has been questioned by various officials, and yesterday’s hearing was no different.
Still, Klein defended the changes yesterday. “I’ve already acknowledged that we could have done a much better job on this,” he said. “But that being said, it seems to me that the right thing for the city to continue to do is to look how to effectively ensure that we get it done.”
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
2 Responses
Does anyone think the Department of Education uses logic to determine any decision that they make? How about reducing the salaries of the overpaid teachers, administrators, and principals as a way of saving money? This is a way for their bureacracy to save money without confronting the United Federation of Teachers, the Union for Principals, etc.
Rochel W.- It seems that you are not at all familiar with the NYC Dept of Edu. The teachers are not at all overpaid. The teachers’ jobs and their salaries have nothing to do with the fiasco of the new transportation rules. You have to keep the issues separate.