This schoolbus strike in New York is starting to set like cement. The schools have given me subway fare cards for me and Alex. Sometimes Alex’s teachers even bring the sign-in book down to the cafeteria, where Alex’s class assembles each morning after what should have been the buses should have dropped him off.
“Bye, daddy!”
“Bye, Alex!”
The latest: NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is arranging a meeting between the companies and union leaders Monday at Gracie Mansion … The strike is now in its second week ... The New York office of the National Labor Relations Board has finished a review of a complaint brought by the bus companies ... The companies had complained the strike is illegal ... The conclusion of the New York office has not been revealed, but the findings have been passed to the Washington headquarters, where a ruling is expected in the next few days ... A federal judge would still have to issue an injunction to order workers back on the job even if the board sides with the bus companies.
Where, I guess, is the voice of people like me, my family and Alex? News outlets have reported on kids travelling hours to school, how a third of the some 50,000 schoolkids with special needs in New York are just skipping class, how tires of buses that continue to roll have been slashed. According to the NYC Department of Education, 91.6 percent of students attended class one recent day. Special needs schools had an attendance rate of only 65.1 percent – which continues to be about 20 percentage points down from the regular attendance rate.
Mostly, though, New York has been in love this week with a cold snap, the coldest weather to hit the city in 17 years. Lots of photos of people with scarves wrapped around their cheeks, lots of snapshots of frosty breath. Few stories connecting the two events. No photos of the color of Alex’s nose by the time he walks with me in 5-degree wind chill the four blocks to the subway. Alex won’t wear gloves, and he won’t put up the hood of the nice down jacket Jill went out of her way to mail-order for him, all the while worried he’d be too hot in it on the bus.
In the cafeteria one morning, the teacher finally finds the sign-in book. I ask her if there’s any word, ask if it’s true that a third of kids like Alex are just skipping school. She sort of nods. “What about the federal mandate that these kids have to be educated?” She sort of nods, and I mention that somebody might get sued over this. The city wants to put up for bid the busing contracts, claiming too much is spent on busing in this city. The drivers want job protection for the senior drivers and matrons should some bus company come in with a low bid. A judge had ruled such protection is illegal. “They’re trying to protect their rights,” the teacher says. I get the feeling this strike is, to her, a major way to fulfill one of her own mandates – get parents into the school to talk to them face to face.
Alex usually falls asleep on the subway – mostly because he’s up a lot of the night – and the other day he refused to sit down when a seat was empty. He likes to stand by the door of the subway car that opens at every stop. Some people are nice about it (one woman offered her seat to Alex). Most others are just subway riders, looking away from yet another person who really shouldn’t be on the subway.
“Alex,” one of his teachers asks one afternoon when I come to pick him up, “what train do you take?”
“Train,” he says.
Who speaks for us? No one so far, and that feels permanent as cement. “Hospitals don’t close when nurses strike,” Jill says. “Where’s the backup? Strikes happen,” says my editor.
The people who are trying to decide this mess aren’t trying to settle the seniority rights of people who fix potholes. The leadership of all sides in this debate should do one of two things: Impregnate the discussion with the importance of the pain they’re causing families that have already suffered a loss; or stop whispering themselves to sleep at night with thoughts of how they really do care about the disadvantaged.
Posted by Jeff Stimpson
at 6:36 PM EST
Updated: Friday, 25 January 2013 6:37 PM EST
