One week ago today, the school bus drivers and matrons of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union went on strike ♕against the private companies that employ them — disrupting transportation for thousands of our students who rely🎃 on bus service to get to and from school each day.
With daytime temperatures dropping below freezing this week, our students and their familꦡies face yet another challenge as they use alternative ways to get to school.
It is absolutely unacceptable for the union to use our students as pawns and jeopardize their school attendance, paওrticularly after the class time lost during and after Hurricane San☂dy.
It’s also misguided to strike, as the city neither sets drivers’ salaries nor can gran𓄧t what the ౠunion is demanding.
The union is protesting a job-security provision that the city can’t legally include in t𒉰he bids it released last month. A series of court decisions, including﷽ one from the state’s highest court, have ruled the provision illegal.
Still, the city must rebid these contracts. Bus-service costs have skyrocketed to $1.1 billion a year and these contra♔cts haven’t been put out for competitive bid in more than 33 years. New York City pays more for school-bus service than any other school district in the country. In Los Angeles, it costs $3,100 per student; here, it’s $6,9🥂00 — more than double the amount.
No other US school-district bus contract has the provision the union is demanding. In fact, 1181 drivers an🐬d matrons work for companies in Westchester and Long ♉Island that don’t have this provision.
A week into the strike, I’m incredibly impressed by how resilient our families have been. The first day of t🐠he disruption, citywide attendance was 87 percent, down just slightly from the normal average of 89.5 percent. It has held steady since, and I want to thank families and students for finding ways to get to school.
The strike has hit our most vulnerable students hardest. Last Wednesday, only 49.1 percent of our special-needs students — about a third of our bused students — attended school, co𒊎mpared with an average of 83 percent in mid-January.By Friday, the attendance rate was up to 62.5 percent. We are pleased with the improvement, but continue to worry that too many who remain wi🀅thout the transportation they need won’t make it to school until the strike is called off.
The city is doing all we can to help. This week, we worked with the Taxi & Limousine Commission to facilitate a reimbursement program for low-income students who can’t use public transportation due to a disability: Qualifying families can assign their payment to a private provider to the DOE so that they don’t have to pay out of pocket and wait to get reimbursed. (Families should work with their schools directly if they believe they need this level of assistance.)
Schools have also distributed MetroCards to students and their parents. ♐Other agencies are helping, from the TLC to the MTAℱ and the NYPD
We are also working with bus companies that are still operating 🦋and have “no-strike” clauses in their union agreements. As a result, all of our pre-K bus routes continue to run.
And we’ve o🔥pened the door to beginning new bus contracts sooner, so that once the bids are made and the contracts are approved, we can get the buses on the road.
We can’t let the union keep standing in the way of🎉 children getting to school. We’ll continue to explore all other options for substitute transportation service.
The union is doing a disservice to our students and families by continuing this strike. While the union demand⛎s illegal job guarantees for 8,000 adults, it’s pushing more than 100🅠,000 children out into the cold.
Our schoolchildren have been through too many trial♛s this year. For their sake, I urge the union to end this strike now.
Dennis M. Walcott is the city’s schools chancellor.