Draws Council's Wrath
Klein Stays Course On School Buses

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

City Council Members lambasted city officials Feb. 13 for their "technocratic" decision to change school bus routes that they said would save only a paltry amount of money.

ROBERT JACKSON: Turn the car around, Klein.

Tempers flared at the joint hearing of the Council Education and Transportation Committees as legislators ripped into Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, demanding that the city terminate its $15.8-million contract with the consulting group that proposed the bus plan.

Klein: Reviewing Rules

Mr. Klein admitted mistakes in implementing the plan, but said there was no going back and that future savings would be substantial. Under questioning, he said he would review the rules that deemed more than 13,000 children who registered for bus service this year ineligible.

"You're like a man driving down the road who is going in the wrong direction," said Education Committee Chairman Robert Jackson, "and is unwilling to listen to his partner in the car who's telling him to pull over."

Mr. Klein said that any change in course would inconvenience the thousands of children now getting used to the new routes, and that the $5.6 million the city would save this year would be worth the current upheaval.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow SAVING MORE THAN HE WASTES: Even as the Department of Education frantically adds staff to cope with problems created by changes in school bus routes, Chancellor Joel I. Klein told the City Council that the long-run savings will exceed the extra money now being spent. Looking on is Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott.

But Council Members questioned the city's cost-cutting projections due to some of the backtracking now taking place to rectify mistakes. Mr. Klein said only some of the savings would be lost. He admitted that additional staff had to be brought in to deal with the chaos caused by the changes. He also said that in some cases routes were added or altered, while in others children who had been removed from buses were allowed to continue to ride them.

Mr. Jackson noted that the bus companies' lawsuit, because of the change in some contracts due to expire in 2010, may also wipe out any savings.

"It sounds like we're actually going to lose money," he said. "I don't know if you're going to get out of that contract."

While Mr. Klein said he couldn't comment on the pending litigation, he promised that the city would profit from the changes. "I think parents appreciate measures that take money that is being wasted and put it back into the classroom," he said.

But some Council Members said the savings weren't worth it if they were being generated by taking children off buses because they were deemed technically ineligible for the service.

"Where you went awry," said Transportation Committee Chairman John Liu, "was that your starting point was looking at legal eligibility as opposed to what families are actually getting."

Tough to Get Handle

Mr. Klein said he did not believe that the majority of savings came from taking ineligible children off buses, but the Department of Education was unable to produce exact numbers since prior to the re-routing, it did not know how many students were actually riding the buses.

With the new plan, there are 82,469 students riding yellow buses: 54,215 from public schools and 28,254 from private ones. About 99,000 children overall were found to be eligible, but some declined the service or requested MetroCards instead.

Both Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Mr. Jackson called for the consulting company, Alvarez and Marsal, to be fired because of the confusion and chaos caused by the changes in the dead of winter. Thousands of children were left stranded during the last week of January when the city changed and consolidated school bus routes.

Mr. Klein said that many children originally deemed ineligible were given MetroCards and thousands of others were given "variances," allowing them to continue to ride the buses.

He said the Department of Education was going to review all of the eligibility rules, including the requirement that a child live more than a quarter of a mile from school and the age at which children were being issued MetroCards as an alternative to busing.

But Mr. Klein said the city would continue to enforce the rules and implement the new routing system.

Council Members, some of whom said they had received more calls on this issue than any other in the past, contended the process called into question DOE's decision-making process and its priorities.

"School bus transportation is not a luxury we can eliminate," said Mr. Liu. "It's not a part of the wasteful bureaucracy."