Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST NYC) Statement on the Current Busing Crisis

Check out our previous blog post on the current busing problems here.  

We in PIST NYC have been saying for eight years that school transportation is run by the wrong people. The fact that the Chancellor has denounced one company and fired the top Office of Pupil Transportation executive is refreshing, but our children’s safe travel and access to education remain at the mercy of companies and executives whose first priority is money.  

Any true overhaul would not just change some faces, but would change the structure and empower the real stakeholders in school busing: the disability community; families of riders of all income levels, races, and languages; the workers who drive and attend to them; educators.  Each of these already have organizations that represent us.

For years, these stakeholders, along with civil rights lawyers, have stated practical methods for fixing everyday school bus route problems. Parents to Improve School Transportation and Amalgamated Transit Union local 1181-1061 have been advocating for a School Bus Bill of Rights to prevent route problems systematically.  

These suggestions are all on record; we have documentation from various City Council hearings, proposals raised to the now-Mayor and now-Public Advocate by Attorney Norman Siegel, notes from multiple parent discussions with Office of Pupil Transportation Director Alexandra Robinson, and a study paid for by the Department of Education itself. Further, at a 2013 mayoral candidates’ forum, Bill DeBlasio agreed to: “an independent commission on school busing, with representation from disability advocates, unions, and parent groups, on standards for bidders, routes, safety, training, and fair labor practices.”  Was Chancellor Carranza advised of any of this?

What is missing from most coverage of the scandal is this: The sad state of New York City school busing got worse after Bloomberg’s administration undermined the Employee Protection Provisions (EPP) that the union had won fair and square.  The companies are impelled to use strict cost-cutting to lower their bids for DOE/OPT contracts; they offer worse pay/benefits and conditions to school bus drivers, attendants and mechanics; hundreds were made jobless or found retirement more appealing; the result is a shortage of trained, experienced bus professionals. [Indeed, a cohort of school bus companies has been in court lately, trying to eliminate EPP altogether against the testimony of parents, workers, and one or two other companies. If they win, we expect more of the same. Even if they lose, these proceedings stall the start of new route contract bids; so OPT recently extended contracts that in theory might not have been renewed otherwise.]

No wonder school bus routes are doubled-up and miserable this Fall! Consider it on a small scale: Any time there is only one driver willing to tolerate a low wage job--where there used to be two drivers enjoying a secure career, that’s when students get picked up late or not at all, have routes which stop at four schools instead of one or two, get yelled at, or worse. When there is little to no investment in climate control or upgrading of vehicles, that’s when children get dehydrated, or their car seats or wheelchairs do not attach properly, or the bus breaks down.

Multiply this by thousands, and you will understand our doubt that merely removing CEO Eric Goldstein or Grandpa’s Bus would make all 150,000 riders safer (We also think the figures and emphasis on background checks are overstated to sensationalize rather than solve the problem).

Any true overhaul of school busing would have a long term goal of public ownership of the bus yards, to stop a chunk of our tax money in the busing budget from going straight to profit for individual companies--to spend it instead on upgrading and “greening” the vehicles. We look forward to civil service-type standards for regulating employee recruitment, training, and retention.

In the meantime:    

• New York City students deserve a skilled workforce that is compensated with EPP, and is listened to about ways to improve the situation.
• We believe that unionized bus crews are the buffer against employer moves that harm young people, whose lives and education matter!   
• We want workers' and parents' grievances about long, overcrowded routes to be expedited. 
• We want a mass way to enforce and strengthen existing regulations on travel time limits, bus temperatures, and other conditions, rather than leaving it up to individual political appointees or company owners.

As always, we urge all NYC communities and labor to get involved in our campaign for a School Bus Bill of Rights.  For more information, please write to pistnyc@gmail.com

http://www.pistnyc.org/  https://www.facebook.com/PISTNYC/

For information in fluent Spanish, please contact https://www.facebook.com/groups/221709251868819/

--  Parents to Improve School Transportation

What's the real story behind the threatened bus strike: are the bus drivers the enemy or part of the 99%?

The real facts behind the threatened school bus strike are difficult to untangle.  As the NY Times explained today, the mayor's position is a reversal of his previous one:

The specter of a strike is an interesting turn of events for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. For years, his administration had fought alongside the union to keep the seniority-based protections in the contracts, in part because removing them could have prompted the union to strike. In July, however, the city made an about-face, asking Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to veto a bill it had helped develop that would have extended the protections to bus contracts for preschool students who receive special education services. 

Mr. Cuomo did just that in September, citing a decision by the State Court of Appeals that including such protections drives up cost and drives away competition. (The protections are part of the contracts, which expire in December 2012, that govern the transportation of about 138,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.) 

In a news conference at City Hall on Friday, Mr. Bloomberg characterized a possible strike as “illegal” and the union’s behavior as “outrageous” based on the court ruling.

See the letter, dated July 11, 2011, from Bloomberg to the Governor, asking him to veto this bill. But as is clear from a CNN article,  the Court of Appeals decision  occurred  in 2008, suggesting that the new legislation passed last year was designed  to supercede the court ruling. And according to Sara Catalinato of Parents to Improve School Transportation (see below) this Employers Protection Provision (EPP), has been in all K-12 busing contracts since 1979; it just didn't yet cover pre-K busing, which the new bill was designed to provide.

The fact that Bloomberg had asked the Governor last summer to veto a bill that would allow him to ensure union protections for pre-K bus drivers in new contracts was conviently omitted from  his most recent message to the public -- as well as most of the news articles -- in which he falsely claimed that seniority protections were something that would be illegal, without mentioning that he had worked to ensure that they remained so. 

It now appears that the city is willing to spend millions to break the bus drivers union, as they have attempted to break the teachers union and the school aides union previously.  This is revealed by the fact that in the midst of huge budget cuts to schools, they have now spent $1.3 million in advance for student Metrocards, daring drivers to strike with winter approaching, even though the existing contract does not lapse until July:

The city’s Education Department spent $1.3 million buying 300,000 MetroCards to give to students who are picked up at bus stops and to parents whose children might need an escort to school because they are disabled or too young to ride the subway on their own. Parents who drive will be reimbursed based on the number of miles traveled, while those who use another type of private transportation can turn in receipts for reimbursement.

Of course, most NYC parents cannot afford to hire private transportation for their disabled children, even with the promise of future reimbursement.

As Sam Pirozzolo of Staten Island writes, “Mayor Bloomberg would rather allow non-union, untrained bus drivers to drive our most vulnerable children to and from school.”   This daring maneuver is reminiscent of Bloomberg’s attack on teacher tenure and seniority, and his push to have new, inexperienced teachers replace seasoned professionals so that he can cut back on education spending even more.

Perhaps since he no longer intends to run for re-election he doesn't fear alienating the unions and/or the public; or perhaps the vicious attacks on unions throughout the country by right wing Governors have unleashed the Tea Party side of Bloomberg. 

Though Walcott’s letter to parents said, “We are deeply concerned about the impact of a strike on your schools and school communities,” they are obviously not concerned enough. Another heedless act by a heedless administration. 

Below is a message from Sara Catalinotto of Parents to Improve School Transportation, who added , “Bottom line: as OWS would say, Bloomberg is the 1%, kids and bus workers are the 99%!”

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The Chancellor's letter home is painting a picture of rogue workers trying to deny our kids a ride to school for no good reason, but our experience has been that it is the DOE's own Office of Pupil Transportation which puts both the children/families and the drivers/escorts in a bad situation every year with route cuts, unnecessarily long rides, and other abuses.  

An Employee Protection Provision is something parents support because we want trained, experienced and decently paid workers handling the youngest children with disabilities.  This EPP has been in the K-12 contracts since 1979; it didn't cover pre-K only because pre-K wasn't universal at the time.  This summer, both houses in Albany passed a bill to extend EPP to pre-Kindergarten and Early Intervention busing, but Cuomo vetoed it at Bloomberg's request (see attached letter).  Nobody wants a strike, but PIST members who I have heard from today are willing to join ATU 1181 picket lines in support of a fair deal for the workers AND the kids.  

We have no reason to trust the DOE to come through with carfare and  Metrocards--these are things parents often ask for in crises caused by OPT mismanagement of busing, which are routinely denied.  It would be hypocritical of Bloomberg's appointees at Tweed to suddenly find the money and staff to figure this out, now that it is a question of opposing advancement of union rights.  We contend that our children need a School Bus Bill of Rights with transportation overseen by those with the most at stake: families, educators and bus workers.

Please contact us again if you want more background documentation on problems with school busing.

Thanks, Sara Catalinotto, pistnyc@gmail.com