« January 2013 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
You are not logged in. Log in
Entries by Topic
All topics  «
autism
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
RSS Feed
View Profile
Books 'n' Blogs
Alex the Boy on Amazon
Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie on Amazon
Other Blogs and Books
Alex the Boy from the publisher
E-books
Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie
Alex: The Fathering of a Preemie (Nook)
JeffsLife
Friday, 25 January 2013
Strike 4


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
Friday, 18 January 2013
Strike 3

On the cattlecar 6 train I feel a tap on my shoulder while Alex and I stand gripping the posts. I turn around and see a woman beckoning from her seat across the aisle.

“Sir, do you want a seat for your son?” Alex takes it and the lady stands beside me in the cattlecar, holding a pole. “I don’t know how you do it,” she says. I sort of want to hear that and sort of don’t. “At least we’re on the same subway line,” I say. “I’ve heard some parents have a commute of two hours or so from The Bronx.”

New York is in the third day of its strike by schoobus drivers. The city, I guess it is, wants to put out to bid the costs of driving kids like Alex to school, claiming they can save a lot of money. The drivers want something put in the contract that says their most experienced drivers will have their jobs protected from new, cheaper drivers. 

“No end in sight I take it?” Jill says.

No. The stories run about the parents who have to drop their kids off at school about 300 seconds before they’re supposed to be at work. Many of the parents claim they have new jobs or jobs where the bosses really don’t care about employees’ problems. No doubt some have jobs where they were scared to mention on the interview that they even had a kid with special needs. I know they do, because I’ve had those interviews, too.

“Have a nice day,” I tell the lady on the 6 train. 

“Have a nice day,” she says.

The two sides bicker. The stories run in the papers and online about the struggle that parents – and their kids with autism, Down’s Syndrome, and a host of other conditions that society tells itself it cares about – have every morning and afternoon these days. One mom tells how her child disintegrates on the bus now, on just the third morning, probably wondering in her close world why her yellow bus hasn’t come. The stories talk about fits on the city buses, about people staring, about the shame you can know when you’re caught in a situation where many people are speaking but you begin to see that no one is speaking for you, and maybe never will.

The mayor of New York speaks. A lot. “I know one thing,” he says. “I know the strike won’t continue past June because that’s the end of the school year.” It is? I’m lucky. I have the time to take my kid like Alex to school. Not all parents do. Not parents have a side in an argument where they really, really need one.



Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 7:51 PM EST
Updated: Friday, 18 January 2013 7:51 PM EST
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Bus, Bus

 

Ned and Alex and I get about halfway up the block from our apartment building this morning when Alex starts stopping in his walk.

 

“Bus?” Alex says, “Bus?”

 

“Alex, there is no bus this morning. Strike. We have to take the subway this morning, with Ned.”

 

We take the subway: Ned will get off at E. 68th Street, like he always does, for his school. Difference is, Alex and I will ride with him and travel on for another six stops on the 6 line to the street where Alex’s school is. “Ned, is this about normal for the 6?” I ask midway through the ride. He shrugs. “A little heavier than normal?” He nods.

 

Earlier, after Ned had clicked on the local news station over his cereal, he asked what was going on with this school bus strike. “Ned,” I said, “here’s the deal. It used to be people were kept according to how long they’d be on a job. In other words, being senior meant they laid off people junior to you who made less money. But now, they lay off people who are senior and who make more money because they figure it’s better to keep the people who make less money.” I was laid off in 2009 because of such reasoning.

 

Now they want to do this to the senior drivers. Union officials said New York City bus drivers will stay on strike until the city agrees to put a job protection clause back into their contract. More than 8,000 bus drivers and matrons went on strike Wednesday morning, meaning some 150,000 students (one of them Alex) to find other ways to get to class. “The first days will be extremely chaotic,” said NYC schools chancellor Dennis Walcott. Drivers with years of seniority worry their experience will make them too expensive to hire unless job protection provisions are included.

 

Most of the kids affected have what our society, when somebody else’s money isn’t at stake, has called “special needs.” I sort of see the union's point, but I also sort of wish they'd waited five years. Last time NYC had a strike like this, I was a high school junior and schoolchildren of my own were a dreaded thought (though a wife who looks like Jill certainly was not). Grandpa calls to ask if there’s any problem with Ned’s transportation. No, Ned takes the subway to and from school himself, and he often stops after school to play football on the playground or do his homework in the library.

 

On the comments section of the local news site some parents say traffic is great without school buses – drivers who flash their yellows with only one car behind them, drivers who slash across lanes – and that parents should take their kids to school anyway. Others point out that parents who’ve just secured new jobs or who work on hourly contract lose a boss’s regard or real dollars because of this mess. Some other readers say isn’t it all too bad?

 

Yes. But who speaks for us? Alex and the people like, our family and the people like us? Who speaks for me and my son when that one car behind the flashing-yellow bus decides Screw it and slips by the side of my son by just a few inches? All the agencies and all the government initials that seem to be there when we want something they can provide are absent in the busing news stories. That leaves this reporter and this dad with the idea that we’re toothless in this argument. I wish people would just admit it.


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 5:51 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, 16 January 2013 5:52 PM EST
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Bus Strike

There's a problem between the bus crews' union and the city of New York. Soon the bus may not come for Alex in the morning and it will not bring him home in the afternoon.

The city wants to put the busing jobs up to bid, claiming they spend about $6,000 per student per year -- most of the students being like Alex, who, unlike his brother, has about the same chance of navigating the subway to school as RG3 has of running full speed about now.

I stand on the corner of E. 108th and Fifth Avenue every school morning with Alex, who stands there in his new black down vest and orange hoody. I hold his hand because if I didn't he might run into traffic.

"'morning," the matron says, coming down the steps of the mini-bus. I remember when Jill and I used to dread the idea that Alex would have to ride the short school bus. 

"'morning," I say. "Bye, Alex. See you later."

The city thinks they can get that job done for less if they open the busing chore to the lowest bidder, claiming that Los Angeles gets the same job done for about half the money. The union says heck with that, though I imagine they don't say "heck." They've promised to strike. "The union has said well maybe on Monday, maybe Wednesday, maybe we'll do it, maybe we won't do it. They're jerking our kids around. We can't allow that to happen. I'm not going to allow that to happen," said NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott. Walcott said when the city put the pre-K bus contracts up for bid, the city saved $95 million over five years.

The union counters that the bus companies who get the contracts might hire lower paid or non-union drivers, leaving some of its drivers and attendants without a job. "A strike is the last card we want to play. But if we are given no other alternative or no other option, we will do what we need to do to protect the children of the city of New York and the work force of the school bus driver industry," said Local 1181 representative Michael Cordiello. "We just need security, job security. We are not asking for anything else. Just to keep our jobs, that's it," said bus attendant Grace Mancini.

Well, I remember I wanted to keep my job, too, sort of, in 2009. It wasn't put up to any bid but I lost it anyway -- to nothingness, I guess, since the mag simply closed. I do also remember the words of my best friend's dad in the '70s, a postal worker who said, "Why can't people see that when wages go up for unions, they go up for everybody?" Guess I see both sides here.

The Friday afternoon before there might be a strike Alex’s bus rounds the corner of 108 right on time. The yellow door slides open and I see Alex and matron rise and step toward the doorway. Then she stops him. He wants to get off but she holds a hand to his chest and fiddles with something near the driver. Finally she turns to me and lets Alex off the bus and hands me a paper. It’s printed in blue and spells out the union’s side.

“See you Monday.”

There’s supposed to be a third side, the side of people like me and my son who’ve already lost a lot more than any union or any contract could ever restore. 


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 8:31 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, 9 January 2013 8:32 PM EST
Monday, 31 December 2012
Camping Again

This will be the longest break Alex has had at this camp, in fact the longest sleep-away he's had except for summer camp, and this is in cold weather. He is to go on a morning when the forecast – which will turn out to be accurate – calls for dark, cold, cloudy, misty. This will be more like the winter camps of the Civil War, minus the dysentery.

I pack him the day before like I have dozens of days before, plucking out the Ts and the socks and the khakis and scrawling STIMPSON on them in some hidden place with the seriously black marker. Later, on the night before, Alex picks his stuff out the suitcase sort of like the way a reporter I worked with once put stuff back into stories that editors had removed. (I say what the editor did: “Cut that out!”

We assemble for the camp bus at a community center on the dark, cloudy and misty West Side. There’s a long wait for the bus to board. “My daughter started crying on the subway,” one mom tells me. Alex doesn’t cry – he’s a vet of this camp now – but he does keep saying “Take a shower! Take a shower!” I’m guessing they have showers and not baths at this camp. I have to guess, of course, because he can’t tell me. I do imagine what he does there, though: Run around, turn light switches on and off in every cabin. 

I write the camp people a note. “He takes his 2 morning and evening Topomax tablets crushed into powder in the metal cup and dissolved in water. Alex is very picky eater. I’m sending some pretzels and cookies. He likes chocolate milk and some strawberry or cherry yogurt, and sliced hot dogs (I am sending hot dogs, too). He has eaten some berries, watermelon, and corn on the cob. ANYthing you can get him to eat, using a lot of praise and especially if others around him are eating the same thing, would be great.”

When I get home I open the freezer and see that forgot to send his Hebrew Nationals. I always forget something. Last summer, despite Alex's own warning over the suitcase, I forgot to send the pajama bottoms he sleeps in. 

When it’s time to board the bus, he bounds up the stairs. He bounded up these same bus steps when he was eight, too, saying, when Jill asked for a kiss goodbye, “Kiss goodbye!” But it didn’t work out back then – bolting, crying – so we held off for a few years and sent him anew, and he’s asked for it since. “Camp, camp?” he’ll say in the days before boarding the bus. “Take a shower.” Who doesn't want to get away from his parents when he's 14?


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 6:06 PM EST
Updated: Monday, 31 December 2012 6:07 PM EST

Newer | Latest | Older