As
in the information that the DOE is providing is useless.
In
response to why my students can’t get to school, I figured it was time, as we
approach Week 5 of the NYC Bus Strike, to review what I’ve been hearing from
families and why the solutions that the Department of Education (DOE) are
providing do not help.
Let’s
look at this DOE
website for checking the status of a bus route. First, if you don’t have
internet in your home or even a computer, you’re not getting to this site.
Secondly, if you’re not able to read English, forget about it.
Today,
we discovered that a bus that has not been picking up students or showing up at
school is listed on the above site as never having been disrupted. OPT (Office
of Pupil Transportation) is currently investigating.
The
DOE website also continues to link to this useless
page, with all the companies saying their overbooked.
All of these
resources are just too much for families to navigate. Over and over again,
I hear its not necessarily the transportation vehicles, but the time it would
take from work to accompany their child back and forth.
Let
me share some examples from my class of 12 students who have multiple
disabilities with you.
Three
students come from the Bronx and one is ambulatory but mom can’t leave her
vending stand in Manhattan for the amount of time that would be needed to pick
her child up, bring her to childcare in the Bronx and return to Manhattan. It
would cause a considerable loss of income. She has arranged for her child to
stay with an elderly neighbor and also has other children she needs to get to
school. Mom also has limited English and speaks a rare language, so it is
difficult to communicate the transportation options that change rapidly.
Two
other families in the Bronx have tried calling various accessible options so
that their children can be transported safely in their wheelchairs, but have
been unsuccessful in securing one. One set of parents has special needs
themselves and it is just too much for them to navigate, although they keep
assuring me that they will try. The other parents keep calling the companies I
give them numbers for with no success and have practically given up. This has
been too much for this student’s mother, as he recently had a feeding tube
placed and has a variety of other health needs that she is constantly managing.
In
Manhattan, closer to school does not necessarily make its easier because it
still requires an adult to be available to accompany a child to and from
school. One student who uses a wheelchair has other siblings with special needs
who go to different schools; does mom have to choose who gets to go to school? Other
families have come down with the flu, mom is willing to try a taxi, but she’s
sick and can’t manage it.
Another
family doesn’t understand what their child is missing out on at school and has
arranged for him to stay home with grandma. They said they will wait the strike
out and they don’t want the Mayor to permanently take away the service if they
make it look too easy. I can’t make them take the information I have and unless
their motivated their not going to navigate through it. I think this one makes
me the saddest, because I think it happens a lot with families with children
with multiple disabilities who don’t understand all the therapy, interaction
and skills they are getting at school and how it directly impacts their
children’s quality of life.
Also
in Manhattan, there is another family with an ambulatory child, but the father
works nights and his mother, who is new to this country, does not feel
comfortable navigating the city with her child with special needs and no
English. Again, I give the information, not sure if its fully comprehended, and
tell them to hang in there.
Three
families have successfully navigated public transportation, but their
attendance is still inconsistent because it is so time-consuming and
exhausting. I shared one particular experience here.
One father works nights and has 2 other children that need to be taken to their
neighborhood schools while his wife provides childcare out of their home.
Another student doesn’t understand why her yellow bus isn’t coming and it’s a
fight for mom to get her on the subway. Mom asked me in her limited English to
give her a pep talk on the subject of how “big girls take the train.”
This
brings me to today and why it was a particularly frustrating day. I’m not
talking frustrating like a little something annoyed me, I’m talking about a day
that makes you question your morals, the way the world works and why I work in
a system that doesn’t value the work I do or the children I teach.
Today,
after once again being questioned by administration on whether I was
distributing the DOE’s information to parents, much of which I’ve collected
from websites like Advocate for
Children and Resources for Children with
Special Needs myself and have passed on to said administrators, I asked, as
a teacher, is it my responsibility to be distributing this information? I do it
out of the goodness of my heart and because I can’t stand not seeing my
students come to school. I communicated with my parents regularly even before
the #busstrike. But I
fear that my consistent phone calls have prevented others from being held
accountable for this information being distributed in multiple languages so
that families are truly assisted.
So what do I do now?
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