New York City?s bus strike is disproportionately affecting one of its most vulnerable populations: children with special needs, whose symptoms or travel limitations can make it extremely challenging for their parents to get them to school using other methods of transportation. Marie Myung-Ok Lee, who has written for about the challenges and joys of raising a child with developmental disabilities, including autism, in New York City, reminded me yesterday that children like her son depend on continuity and predictability in ways that children without his symptoms do not. And many children in the city?s special education programs present particular challenges for bus drivers and their aides. They may be prone to violent tantrums, or need physical help. It?s a different job, and a different relationship, than the phrase ?bus driver? immediately suggests.
The parents of many special needs children are both outraged and worried. They face days, or even weeks, of finding other ways to get their children to school (the last bus strike, in 1979, lasted 12 weeks). Beyond that, they fear that they may face larger change: new, less experienced drivers. Longer routes. Less help. And they fear for the drivers and aides they rely on and appreciate. They value the work those people do for their families. They want to see that work appreciated and compensated.
But the city is truly in a bind. As was reported elsewhere in The Times, the strike may look, on the surface, like a union dispute, ?but its true roots are in an attempt to reform one of the most inefficient transportation systems in the country, one that costs almost $7,000 a year for each passenger, an amount so high that many of those children could hire a livery cab for about the same price. By comparison with the next three largest school districts, Los Angeles spends about $3,200, Chicago about $5,000, and Miami, $1,000.?
Busing 150,000 students, about a third of whom are in the special education program, now costs the city $1.1 billion a year. That?s money that could be spent on other programs ? programs that might also benefit those students. What if the choice was between a more experienced bus aide, and an extra classroom assistant? Of course, it?s nothing so clear-cut, and it never will be. That in itself is a big part of the problem.
The strike is an immediate crisis, along with an encapsulation of the larger problems that face national, state and governments across the country. ?The straightforward task of transporting children to and from school has become a morass of good and bad intentions, shortsighted marketplace policies and outright corruption? ? a description that (perhaps minus the outright corruption) could describe everything from our national approach to gun control to the fact that even as one arm of the federal government subsidizes the production of corn syrup, another tells us not to consume it. Policies put in place to resolve a single problem reverberate across other systems. Costs balloon during decades without change, and changing populations ? like the increase in the number of students in New York City?s special education programs ? start to rely on the status quo in unexpected ways.
There is little that is black and white about the bus strike. It?s hard to argue with the proposition that the city cannot spend $7,000 a year to bus each child, but equally hard not to see that the short-term impact of wholesale change, on children, drivers, aides and parents, could be devastating to individuals. It?s hard enough to imagine a solution just as an armchair observer. To negotiate something that all parties, with their competing interests, can accept will be a herculean task.
Has the bus strike affected your family? Schoolbook asked the same question. Share your story there, or here.
Parents outside New York City, do you rely on bus services? How are they financed, and are you reasonably happy with everything from drivers to timing and routes? Whose responsibility is it to get children to school? Regulations concerning the provision of transportation to school vary locally, and are a frequent subject of debate ? because it?s not really a free and equal education if not everyone can get there, but the public funds allocated to busing inevitably appear to benefit some people more than others. Providing bus service to students has never been as simple as it seems.
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