Changes to school bus routes go into effect Monday morning throughout New York City, and that has some parents worried & upset. The changes affect bus stops, drop-offs and pickup times. Some parents are protesting the changes, saying their children will have to take the public bus because of school bus routes being eliminated.
Naturally, the brilliant city decided to implement these new rules on one of the coldest days in the dead of winter.
Why couldn’t the new routes be implemented on the first day of school?
Why must children be forced to stand in the freezing cold for an additional 30 minutes – while drivers unfamiliar with the routes stumble around trying to get their bearings straight?
Anyone with questions or complaints can call the transportation hot line at 718-482-3700 or e-mail [email protected]
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10 Responses
Are you kidding? A “big stink over nothing”??
I have to walk my four kids five blocks to a lousy bus stop??
(Not to mention that I have twins who are in first grade, a third grader and a fifth grader)
THEN when they return home at 5:00 I have to walk BACK and wait for them.
A big stink?
Perhaps you want to come watch my six month old while I go wait at the bus stop at 5:00?
Perhaps you want to cook my kids dinner while I walk to a bus stop with my freezing infant blocks away from my home?
Why couldnt Bloomberg do this at the beginning of a school year?
Guess being filthy rich makes you forget about us hard working people.
my kids schools sent out the letter and it said “dont call us, call the city”.
are they kidding?
the biggest joke is how the city says that they will be buying books and things with the extra money.
ha! are they kidding? What are they buying exactly? Ramban al hatorah? Shulel aleph? Gemorah baba metzeiah?
puleeze!
Where are our elected officials?
Where is Simcha Felder?
Elected officials?
IT’S BUISNESS AS USUAL…….
They could not care less about you, the tax paying, hard working New Yorker.
Be thankful you have school bus service. Where I live, the state senator (a Jew, who was defeated in the last election, so maybe things will change) was a sticler for separation of church and state, and refused to ever go to bat for public school buses for private schools.
I, but mostly my wife, have been driving kiddie car pool for 30 years!
Destro613, for whatever reason, you chose to defend another one of NYC big screw ups. Did you daughter have to wait this morning for forty minutes for her bus and end up crying from being so frozen???! And that is after the school , based on info received from the NYC Dept of Education, sends home a letter informing us of PRECISE times to wait for pick up and drop off. On top of this, the drop off time is half an hour before the school is even finished for the day!!! All of this now requires us, hard working parents, to spend more time trying to track someone at school or in the NYC OPT to figure this mess out. “This change will generate savings?” All I know is that it is generating a big headache. And by the way, no one reached out to me to ask me to select the best kind of transporation for my child. If they did, I may have been a little more on board with this whole change.
Many years ago when this mid-year change business started we made inquiries about the timing and found out that the timing of these changes is part of the union contract. The elected officials can’t do much about that.
why would it have been better if this started on the first day of school ?
it’s cold now, and it would’ve gotten cold even if this started on the first day.
Most of my talmidos arrived close to a 1/2 late this morning for school, with first and second graders having to walk 4-5 blocks to a new bus stop. Quite an inconvenience!
NY has always stood out for its free bus transportation for school age children, just ask families in Baltimore and Lakewood how inconvenient transporting children to school is. The last few yrs more and more funding has been cut for schools and special ed-called “balancing the budget”.
call 311 to reach the city hotline – Not 411 – that will get you to a phone directory…..for whatever my opinion is worth…it happens to be I am involved with the busses in a local school and the system is a joke. The union controls everything not the elected officials. The drivers pick their routes based on seniority and they change routes to accommodate either their final drop off and its proximity to the garage to park the bus, or they will adjust to the parents who give them the most mezumon, they do as they please. My children’s bus stop location stayed however the pick up time was pushed to 40 minutes later. As the bus passed my house this morning I got a neighbor to stop it down the block and asked the driver why he was still coming the earlier time? His answer? (a classic Union bus driver answer)..”I don’t like that whole new route, the timing is off I will be coming the regular time so have your kids ready!…..and there is nothing to do…..the Union backs the drivers, the drivers know it, the people who work in the office know it, and we are not dealing with brightest of minds nor the nicest of character.
By the way, do not accept an answer from the school that there is nothing they can do. Flood the bus company with calls and YES flood the school with calls. It is a cop-out that the schools administration doesn’t fight for what is best for the kids. I know I do for my kids / parents in my school and you should expect yours to fight for you.
Look at the front page of today’s paper and you will see a 7 year old boy who now has to take 3 city busses to get to school…….the system has let the people down once again.