School buses continue to leave students and parents hanging

NY Daily News 

A “cataclysmic” failure of New York City school bus transportation has left scores of city kids without buses for days or weeks — and some desperate families still waiting for a pickup more than a month into the school year, parents and advocates say.

Years of dysfunction compounded by the logistical challenges of restarting in-person classes amid the pandemic and a nationwide driver shortage have pushed transportation conditions in the city to a record low, according to families and school bus watchdogs.

“The busing situation in this city is cataclysmic,” said Amaranta Viera, the mother of a first-grader with autism who was without a bus for nearly a month after classes started on Sept. 13.

Some students legally entitled to school buses because of disabilities still have not been assigned a route. Others have a route, but no driver, matron or paraprofessional to pick them up. And some kids whose buses do show up are facing erratic pickups or hours-long rides, according to experiences shared with The Daily News.

“The problems are boiling over this year with kids missing not just hours, but days and weeks of school,” said Sara Catalinotto, the head of the advocacy group Parents to Improve School Transportation.

DOE officials said there are roughly 550 students who still need bus routes, a slight increase over the approximately 500 kids without routes at this time in 2019 and 2018 but still a small fraction of the 150,000 total kids who take school buses. Officials claimed all kids who were registered by the first day of classes now have a route.

But advocates say the number and severity of complaints pouring in this year are noticeably greater than in years past.

Catalinotto said she heard from eight families just last week who still don’t have a school bus, and 15 since the beginning of the year, compared to zero and three such complaints in 2019 and 2018. Another parent advocate who began compiling bus grievances at the beginning of the year got 58 hits, with half complaining of a no-show bus. The city’s Panel for Education Policy solicited bus complaints from parents for a recent meeting and got roughly 60 emails in three days.

“Typically by now, the bus issues would die down a lot, but not this year,” said Lori Podvesker, the education director of the special education advocacy group INCLUDEnyc and a member of the Panel for Education Policy.

The DOE also pointed to a 63% reduction in the number of calls to the Office of Pupil Transportation hotline compared with fall 2019, from roughly 6,400 calls per day in 2019 to 2,400 calls per day this year.

But parents say calling the OPT’s hotline is a lesson in futility because they either can’t get through or are directed to contact their schools or bus companies — discouraging them from trying again.

Mayor de Blasio's brown standard for school re-openings

 

 NY Post

Angry New York parents have lashed out at Mayor Bill de Blasio, saying his so-called reopening of schools is a “farce” and a failure.

Many complain that serious staffing shortages have created bizarre scenarios where kids sit at desks to watch a teacher broadcast the lessons to their laptops from a nearby room.

Others say their kids are lucky if they attend school five days a month.

“It’s a farce,” said Kate Cassidy, a mother of two kids in Manhattan’s District 2.

“There is zero live in-person teaching at my school,” she said. “None. To call this a reopening is ridiculous.”

A mom at MS 167 in Manhattan said: “These schools are not reopened. And they know that.”

Others stressed that the limited time their kids have in school is continually threatened and disrupted by school closures, which occur if two students or staffers test positive for COVID-19. On any given day, hundreds of city schools are closed for up to two weeks because of the protocol.

De Blasio has repeatedly suggested that the rule might change given the vaccine and improved COVID-19 numbers — but parents say they’re tired of waiting.

The city first reopened elementary schools in late December, and middle schools reopened last month. High schools are slated to reopen Monday.

De Blasio has heralded the NYC model as the “gold standard,” but Cassidy said his triumphant portrayal of “reopened” classrooms was false.

“It’s like he’s being intentionally obtuse about the whole thing,” Cassidy said, adding that her kids average about five days in school a month.

“It’s infuriating.”

 The Blaz's gold standard is a shit sandwich

Close call prompts petition

From DNA Info:

When Alexa Weitzman lost sight of her 20-month-old son on Sunday for several seconds while playing at a popular neighborhood playground, her heart sank, she said.

As she looked around Katzman Playground, at Yellowstone Park, she saw that its three gates, adjacent to busy streets, including Yellowstone Boulevard, were wide open.

The toddler was quickly located, but the Forest Hills mom said the experience prompted her to start an online petition on Change.org on that same day, in which she asked the Parks Department to install a locking mechanism on the gates.

Sunnyside parents suggest new school location

From NBC:

For thousands of New York parents, it's a challenge finding a public school that isn't overcrowded. In one Queens neighborhood, they're looking for a unique solution -- but will the city respond? Andrew Siff reports.

Monserrate having trouble paying restitution

From the Daily News:

Disgraced ex-State Sen. Hiram Monserrate is struggling to pay his court-ordered restitution — and he doesn’t visit his elderly parents despite claiming to live with them, new filings and his father revealed.

The crooked Queens pol, who was expelled from the Senate after assaulting his girlfriend, earns $1,244 a month working at a Brooklyn law firm and $2,227 a month from pension and other benefits, new filings show.

Ten percent of those earnings is supposed to go to the government every month to pay $79,434 in restitution, filings show.

But between March and May 30, Monserrate only made one payment, prompting the U.S. Department of Probation to notify Manhattan Federal Court Judge Colleen McMahon on Tuesday of the “noncompliance,” which was subsequently rectified. He says in court papers that he’s now caught up.

Filings noted Monserrate, 47, lives with his 80-year-old mother, Hilda, and 79-year-old father, Manuel, in Bellerose, Queens. But his father said he rarely even visits.

Park problems in Vallonia

From the Daily News:

The Astoria Heights Playground is more dumping ground, thanks to bums who leave broken beer bottles, condoms and plastic bags with remnants of cocaine and heroin all over the place.

Fed-up parents — including one who brought a jar of broken glass to a community board meeting Tuesday night — are demanding the city clean up and install a gate at the 30th Rd. playspace to keep it secure at night.

“The reason we moved to this block was because of this park,” said Scott Muldoon, 43, who has a 2-year-old son. “But I’ll walk 10, 15, 20 blocks to take my son to another park because I don’t always feel like it’s safe here.”

The playground also needs new equipment, said City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria).

“Until then, the city needs to perform more basic maintenance to make sure it is a clean and safe place for our kids,” he added.

Even the bathrooms are a problem, said Astoria mom Lea Kotte, 29. She said they smell strongly of urine and aren’t properly cleaned.

“This is our local park (and) I can’t use it,” Kotte said. “There are numerous incidents of babies picking up broken beer bottles and God knows what else.”

Another parent, Brad Lunsford, 42, of Astoria, said he’s found bags that had contained cocaine, marijuana and what he believes was heroin in the park.

Hoidy toidy fountain keeps breaking

From LIC Post:

Many Long Island City parents were excited last week when the sprinkler system at Gantry Plaza State Park was finally repaired and their children could finally run under the water keep cool.

But that initial joy that the “Rainbow Park” sprinkler provided was short lived. The sprinkler broke after 2 ½ days of operation.

“The sprinkler was damaged after Superstorm Sandy and it required a big stink for it to even come on last week,” said Kris Schrey, the head of the Long Island City Parents Group. “Now we are battling for it to be repaired yet again.”

The system’s design is the source of the problem. The designers, in a quest to be environmentally conscious, shied away from a regular system where the water would have run off into East River.

Instead they adopted a system that recycles the existing water through a filter (with chlorine), much like a swimming pool. “Unfortunately, this is an expensive, fragile and error prone system,” Schrey said.

The system also requires two employees to operate it. One employee has to monitor the chlorine levels every hour, while the other handles health & safety issues.

Translation: It takes 2 park employees to hose down yuppie spawn in LIC.

Johnny kicks off mayoral campaign by repeating a lie

From the Daily News:

City Controller John Liu officially kicked off his mayoral bid Sunday by touting that he worked in a sweatshop as a child - a biographical claim the Daily News debunked years ago.

Speaking to supporters from the steps of City Hall, Liu pitched as cherished fact his childhood work alongside his mother in a sweatshop — but his parents said during the Democrat’s 2009 campaign for controller that their son's version of history was incorrect.

"My dad took a job far beneath what he had had in Taiwan," Liu said Sunday. "My mom spent years in a sweatshop, where I often had to pitch in to make ends meet."

Four years ago, The News investigated Liu's “sweatshop” story — his campaign had run ads featuring bleak factory scenes — and learned from his mother, Jamy Liu, that she never worked in a sweatshop.

She said she mostly worked from her Flushing, Queens, home on a knitting machine and that her son would help her, getting paid 25 cents for every ball he spun on a yarn-spinning tool.

John Liu’s father, a banker named Joseph who owned the middle-class home where his son was raised, confirmed in 2009 that his wife never worked in a sweatshop and neither did their son.

After The News broke the story, Liu acknowledged it was an exaggeration, telling the newspaper’s editorial board that he bought candy with the money his mother gave him for helping her.

From the NY Observer:

Mr. Liu might well believe that voters will treat the accusations against his associates no more seriously than he himself seems to regard them. The polls indicate at the moment that he is making a serious miscalculation—he trails Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. And if you think they’ll remain silent about the Liu campaign’s transgressions, you haven’t been following New York politics very long.

Some of Mr. Liu’s supporters, particularly in the Asian-American community, have suggested that he is the victim of a racist plot, presumably orchestrated by anonymous power brokers who can’t bear the thought of an Asian in Gracie Mansion. To his eternal discredit, Mr. Liu has not dismissed these ridiculous accusations out of hand. If anything, he has stoked the paranoia, saying that “something is driving this so-called investigation.”

Well, he’s right about that—something is driving this investigation. And that something is his campaign’s dreadful fund-raising practices.

It’s a simple matter, Mr. Liu: if your campaign had followed the rules, you wouldn’t be in this mess.

The man should be preparing to leave public service, not asking for promotion to the city’s highest elective office.

City reopened Zone A school prematurely?

DOE teaching model a disservice to children

From the Queens Chronicle:

An inclusion classroom is a “one size fits all” approach that consists of regular education students, advanced learners and special education students who have been given an Individualized Education Program. Most of these classes have two instructors, a regular education and special education teacher, who often switch off between teaching students as one comprehensive group and breaking them up into smaller factions so pupils with different abilities can learn from one another. All-inclusive classrooms burden teachers and treat students like members of a herd instead of vibrant, thoughtful, creative individuals with a vast array of strengths and an equal number of perfectly normal, character-building imperfections.

Our system has failed our teachers and in doing so has failed our students. Administrators fill cramped classrooms with students who have wildly different achievement levels, yet teachers are expected to keep test scores rising and every student learning. Who benefits from this assembly line approach? The bar is lowered for mainstream students while those who require special help and individual attention are ignored.

Is it rational to expect a special needs child to feel a sense of achievement when being measured by the same metrics as a gifted student of the same age? Advanced learners are also suffering because of the inclusive model.

Parents bear some responsibility here as well. We all want our children to perform at a high level, but kids need to understand the difference between winning and losing. When every child on a team gets a trophy, there is nothing to strive for.