Deluged with complaints from thousands of parents and students, the city Department of Education has backed down in its plan to cut school-bus service – and will restore 17 routes this Monday.
The restorations bring the total number of bus routes cut under the chaotic mid-winter cost-cutting measure to 99 and will reduce the projected annual savings by $1.7 million to about $10.3 million – or roughly $5 million for the current fiscal year.
The added bus routes were selected from among 35 that had been used as emergency runs.
“We said from the start we’d be making adjustments. That includes adding buses and granting variances,” Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said in explaining the adjustments.
She declined to say where the routes would be replaced, citing student privacy, but said the additional buses would be up and running when students return to school Monday.
Last month, the agency cut 116 of its 2,156 contracted bus routes for general-education students and consolidated hundreds of others. The reasoning was that the city could save $12 million a year by not having to map buses for thousands of students thought not to be using them.
The rerouting, accompanied by newly enforced eligibility rules, tossed thousands of children – some as young as 5 – off yellow buses and onto public transportation, and left many waiting in freezing temperatures at bus stops for buses that never came.
The situation quickly became a public-relations nightmare for the Bloomberg administration, which was assailed by parents and lawmakers for pushing forward with the plan in the dead of winter.
Education officials have acknowledged that they underestimated how many children would be made ineligible for bus service and that their computer system was not equipped to ensure that siblings attending the same school would be on the same bus route.
Consequently, the department has approved service variances for 1,192 students thus far, according to the agency.
Carolyn Daly, spokeswoman for the School Bus Contractors Coalition, a group of bus companies who sued to stop the plan, praised the restorations and pledged to work with the agency.
“We know from providing this service for decades that many, many families depend on safe, consistent bus service,” she said. “The Department of Education is on the right road in restoring these runs.”
Meanwhile, a Queens legislator is working to ease busing eligibility restrictions for city students.
Under an amendment drafted by state Sen. John Sabini (D-Queens), students in kindergarten through sixth grade who reside more than half a mile from their school would be guaranteed free transportation to school.
Currently, the half-mile rule is limited to students in kindergarten through second grade. Students in third through sixth grades must live a mile or more from school to be eligible for free transportation.
The amendment would not affect whether free transportation comes in the form of a school bus or public transportation.
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One Response
THis is a good start, but if there are still hardships then the pressure must be kept up. THe city is saving so very little compared to its billions of dollars surplus that it is disgusting that they seek to save pennies on the backs of little children.