Youssef children get school bus back

No more MetroCards for the Youssef children, who were featured in The Queens Courier cover story on Thursday, February 8.
The Department of Education (DOE) called Ahmed Youssef on Monday, February 12, to tell him his 5-, 6-, and 8-year-old daughters, who had lost school bus service in January, would be provided with a ride for the 4.11-mile trip to and from the Razi School in Woodside.
“A variance for bus service was approved today [Tuesday] for the Astoria children,” DOE spokesperson Margie Feinberg wrote in an email to The Queens Courier.
“I’m so happy with the result,” Youssef said on Tuesday, February 13.
For over a week, Youssef had found friends and hired taxis to take his daughters, who are in kindergarten, first, and second grades, to school, but on Wednesday, February 7, he traveled with the girls on public transportation - the Q19A bus. The result was a cold, chaotic mess. Twenty minutes into the trip, 5-year-old Salma Youssef was already sobbing after waiting in the cold for the public bus.
On Tuesday, the family gleefully walked across the street from their Astoria apartment to the yellow school bus stop.
“It’s already in the system if you go on the Net it says: Salma Youssef - yellow bus, not MetroCard,” Youssef said.
Several local lawmakers, led by Senator John Sabini, have called on the DOE to scrap the new busing plans. Sabini has collected signatures from 23 State lawmakers on a letter to school officials demanding answers. On Tuesday, February 13, Sabini’s staff delivered the letter to a joint meeting of the City Council’s Education and Transportation committees.
During the meeting, City Council members also asked the DOE to reconsider the plan and questioned why consultants Alvarez & Marsal revamped routes, when another company, Accenture, made the same recommendations years ago.
“Based on what [you] have said, not all of the savings is due to waste … In fact, a substantial amount of that is due to taking service away from families that have relied upon school bus service,” said Councilmember John Liu. “To simply take it away, and in many cases not give the proper notification or even allowing parents to appeal, is coldhearted.”
Originally planned to save $20 million per year, school officials now estimate that the city will save about $12 annually, but since the changes went into effect in January, the savings are estimated to be $5 million for the remainder of the school year. That figure is being further reduced by the cost of extra emergency buses.
Although apologetic, city officials said that the plan would not be scrapped.
“Even with all the concerns that have arisen, we stand by this goal and will continue to pursue it,” Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott told Council members at the hearing.
Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum has proposed legislation to ban the DOE from enacting changes to the routes during the middle of the school year.
“Any changes to bus service should be well-planned,” Gotbaum said. “We still struggle with the fallout from a completely mismanaged bus route reorganization. We need to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
For Whitestone residents Denise Vecchio and Michelle Friedman, the question remains: How long will the school bus keep coming?
When the route cuts went into effect on Monday, January 29, Vecchio and Friedman complained so bitterly about their 10-year-old sons getting MetroCards to go to school that the DOE has sent out a temporary bus. Without the yellow school bus, Peter Vecchio and David Friedman would have had to take two buses about a five-mile distance, transferring at bustling Main Street Flushing.
Now the moms are waiting for a letter saying that bus ride to and from I.S. 250 in Flushing will continue, at least through the end of the school year.
Feinberg said that the DOE is still looking into whether the route can be made permanent.
“He’s 10, and they wanted to give him a MetroCard … He’s never even gone to the park himself,” Vecchio said. “If I were to leave him home alone I could get arrested, and they want me to put him on a bus by himself with strange adults. They didn’t put any thought into this.”