Judge blocks school bus cuts temporarily

A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice has put the brakes on a City plan to cut school bus routes - 250 citywide and 94 in Queens, the most of all five boroughs.
On Friday, November 17, Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich signed a temporary order to halt the cuts, which the City estimates could save $20 million that the Department of Education (DOE) can then reinvest into City schools.
On Friday, December 1, a hearing on the issue is scheduled for Manhattan Supreme Court, and the DOE has said that no bus routes will be altered until the court rules on its injunction. After the hearing, an appeals process is expected to last until Friday, December 8, and if the Court reverses last week's decision, the bus routes would begin their new schedule in January.
&#8220It's regrettable that as we are working to get more tax payer dollars into our classrooms, bus companies are asking us to pay for empty school bus seats,” said Andrew Jacob, a spokesperson for the DOE. &#8220We strongly disagree with the decision that the Court made lat week.”
The original plan, which was set to take effect on Monday, December 4, called for less busy bus routes to be cut based on responses sent in by parents. However, when 62 percent of those eligible as reported by the DOE - 62,000 parents - responded to the notices sent home, critics charged the response was not an accurate tally of students who need busing.
Critics of the plan have said that oftentimes they are not given paperwork sent home with their children, and that at times, parents simply do not respond to notices.
&#8220If the parents have really been given the opportunity to sign up and they have elected not to, for some reason, then the City should put the money back in the schools,” said Jeannie Tsavaris-Basini, President of the Community Education Council of District 30, an area of Jackson Heights and Astoria, where 20 of 84 bus routes will be cut. &#8220But I don't want the kids to be kids to be denied transportation, so they can put money into the school.”
&#8220It's a safety issue,” Tsavaris-Basini said. &#8220Often, it's still dark in the morning when they are going to school.”
In District 24, which stretches from Long Island City to Flushing, 18 routes will also be cut.
In Queens, where many parents are immigrants, local politicians feared that parents had not been able to understand the importance of the notice. Nevertheless, Jacob said that the DOE made the notice available to the schools in English and eight other languages - Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Haitian/Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu. In addition, should the schools need any documentation to be translated into any other language, the DOE has an office that could do the translation, he said.
Still, local politicians wondered if parents truly understood the importance of the notice.
&#8220I'm a little concerned that this disproportionately falls on areas like ours,” said State Senator John Sabini, who represents District 30. &#8220Once again the Department of Education has a way to not keep parents informed … Sending a letter home in a backpack is not the way to do this.”
Sabini said that oftentimes grandparents, aunts and uncles care for children after school, so the DOE should contact parents directly.
&#8220I have a major problem with the timing. Why are they doing this in the middle of the school year when bus service is more necessary than ever?” Sabini said. &#8220It seems to me to have a bit of an Oliver Twist flavor to it … the idea of kids walking to school in the snow.”
The ruling was in response to a request by 10 bus companies to block the City from making cuts to the routes, which carry an average of 72,750 students per day, as reported by the bus companies.
Local 1181 of Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents the drivers, has said in published reports that up to 300 drivers could lose their jobs if the plan is given the green light.