A school bus crashed into a car in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, leaving 14 people injured, including 11 children.

According to the FDNY, all injuries were minor, except for those of the driver of the car. The driver was listed as seriously injured but stable. The injured were all transported to area hospitals.

The accident occurred at 8:10 a.m. at the intersection of Myrtle and Wilson Avenues, the NYPD reported.

With most of the city’s school bus drivers still on strike due to a dispute with the Department of Education (DOE) over a request for bids for bus company contracts, local organization Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST) checked with the Amalgamated Transportation Union Local 1181 and received confirmation that the bus in question was a non-union bus.

The new bids were due in to the city on Tuesday, the same day as the school bus crash.

Sara Catalinotto said this accident shows the danger posed to children being driven by non-union bus drivers.

“I would not put my child on a bus with crew that is not vetted or screened or certified like the people who are now mostly on strike,” Catalinotto said.

Catalinotto has heard reports, she said, that the DOE told companies who aren’t on strike to use a second bus driver in place of a matron on buses that usually have an attendant. This would primarily affect special needs students; matrons are attendants trained to work with disabled children.

“It is a life and death matter,” Catalinotto said, “as well as a matter of education, and especially the rights of kids with disabilities.”

PIST is calling for an independent investigation by the Bushwick community into the cause of the accident.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The Department of Education announced that it has received 67 bids from school bus companies wanting to win contracts to transport city school children. Monday was the deadline for bids, according to NY1.

Bus drivers of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 have been on strike since Jan. 16 to ensure that all new contracts include Employee Protection Provisions, to protect senior drivers from losing their jobs.

Three bus companies have also filed a new lawsuit against the city because the bids for new contracts do not include EPPs, it is illegal for the city to continue working from ongoing contracts that keep the protections.

City officials have said that the protections that the union wants are illegal. Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has stated that the bus drivers and matrons need to negotiate directly with the companies that hire them.

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The Finance and Education Committees of the City Council held a hearing Friday morning with Chancellor Dennis Walcott of the Department of Education on the cost of student transportation, in light of the on-going bus driver strike over the city’s request for bids on school bus contracts. The strike is now in its fourth week.

Councilman Robert Jackson, as chair of the Education Committee, largely led the hearing, during which he repeatedly accused the Bloomberg administration of attempted union-busting.

Jackson scolded Bloomberg and Walcott for misrepresenting statistics, pointing out that the given cost of transit per pupil — which Bloomberg and Walcott have reported as nearly $7,000 —  is actually averaged between the cost for special needs students, which is $15,000 “due to the need for escorts and other requirements,” and the cost for general education students, which is about $2,600, according to Jackson.

The bus contracts in question are for the bus routes for special needs students.

As for the mayor and chancellor’s complaints that the city pays more for busing than cities in other states do, Jackson scoffed, “I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by that.”

“Don’t we spend more for everything here?” Jackson asked, noting the higher cost of living in general.

Other speakers at the hearing included parents of special needs children, as well as a special needs bus matron of eight years, who broke down crying as she spoke of her charges.

“We love those kids,” she said “It’s not only about the money, it’s about those precious kids.”

Chancellor Walcott noted that the bids for bus contracts are due today, Monday February 11, and will be opened tomorrow.

Department of Education spokesperson Marge Feinberg told Metro the bids “will be reviewed and then awarded to the lowest responsible bidders.”

Why are they striking?

The bus drivers’ union is demanding that an Employee Protection Provision be included in the new request for bids, so that current drivers will maintain their positions and salaries regardless of new management. The union alleges that EPPs would assure that the drivers and matrons be trained to care for special needs children.

One mother of an autistic child talked about the bus matron on her child’s bus, “a wonderful woman named Maria.”

“The idea that she would make even less than she’s making now horrifies me,” she said.

Walcott said repeatedly that the city is maintaining a rigorous training program for all bus drivers, but Jackson argued that the request for bids only asks that the company have 20 months of prior management experience, and does not include requirements for bus driver experience.
Support from city falls short

The city has provided MetroCards for parents and promised reimbursement for those who need to take car services or taxis during the school bus strike, but the parents at the hearing said that nobody has been reimbursed yet, and that the city-provided list of car services is useless.

One mother reportedly had to call 20 different services off the list, and was denied service by all of them.

“Twenty different services said we shouldn’t be on that list or we’re not doing that anymore,” reported Maggie Moroff, Special Education Policy Coordinate at Advocates for Children. Moroff also noted that until recently, the city was not reimbursing parents for their trips back home after dropping their child off, or back to school to pick their child up, only covering the trips for which the child was actually present. Some students have reportedly been asked to attend different schools for locational convenience.

Moroff and Councilman Jackson both emphasized that special needs students who cannot make it to school are not only missing classes, but also critical services including behavioral, occupational, speech and physical therapy.

One of the mothers present read a statement from another mother who reported that her autistic child was so exhausted by the over-stimulation of a two and a half hour bus ride to and from school that he had already missed three days over the course of the 12 day strike.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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