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After sandy

22 schools shut for 7th straight day; no buses for some students

Students in 22 city schools will miss a seventh straight day of class on Wednesday while the Department of Education continues to restore buildings damaged and disrupted by Hurricane Sandy.

And thousands of other students will have to make their way to school on their own because the department does not have enough buses to move all of the students who need transportation.

After calling local private bus companies and petitioning the state and federal emergency relief organizations, the city has rounded up more than 100 additional buses to join the 7,400 that ran on Monday, officials said this evening. But still, buses will serve students at fewer than half of the 43 schools that are so severely damaged that they must be moved. Those schools, which together enroll about 20,000 students, are opening for the first time on Wednesday.

A major problem, Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky said this evening, is that the department’s transportation hub, located in Long Island City, still does not have power. The department can only add new routes, not make the ones it already operates more efficient, while the computer system that programs the city’s 7,700 school bus routes is down, he said.

“We don’t have access to any of that,” he said. “Everything we are doing at this point is by hand.”

Families are finding out today whether their children will have a ride to school. Students and parents at schools without busing will be given Metrocards — but only after they make their way to their closed schools first. The department will reimburse families for the trip.

For high school students, who do not typically get bused, the department will provide Metrocards, and students who live on the Rockaways, where public transportation still has not been restored, will be able to take school buses to their relocated schools. But because of the bus shortage, they will have to wait until 10 a.m. to board buses that have already run one route.

High school students who live in the Rockaways but attend schools that survived the storm unscathed might have an even harder time leaving the peninsula: Polakow-Suransky said he did not know whether the department planned to bus them at all.

In buildings that will begin co-locations on Wednesday, principals and teachers from the host and relocated schools worked together today to plan how space and supplies will be shared. Where possible, teachers brought materials from their damaged schools to the new sites, and Polakow-Suransky said the department had given each school extra funds for supplies.

That planning process will get underway tomorrow for 13 Queens schools — with 6,000 students — that still do not have power and must be relocated. Polakow-Suransky said it was “unlikely” that most of the schools would have their power restored before Thursday, when students are expected to report to new locations.

The other nine schools, enrolling 7,000 students, that will not reopen to students until at least Thursday are located on three high school campuses that have been used as shelters since the storm.

One of the campuses that cannot reopen tomorrow is John Jay High School in Brooklyn, where Mayor Bloomberg said during a news conference that about a dozen evacuees had come down with “what we believe to be a stomach virus.” The department expects that its four schools will be able to open on Thursday, after a vigorous cleaning. But one of the schools, Millennium Brooklyn High School, is choosing not to wait: Its website instructs students to report Wednesday to nearby P.S. 321.

Two other buildings that have served as shelters will not be ready to reopen to students on Wednesday because the city is reducing the number of evacuees staying in them. At Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, there are still 800 evacuees, and George Washington Campus in Manhattan received a new influx of people needing housing today, Polakow-Suransky said.

Students at five other campuses that have been used as shelters will return on Wednesday, most to buildings that still house some evacuees. Manhattan’s High School of Graphic Communication Arts, where teachers decried conditions in the building last week, has been closed as a shelter site.

And among the schools in operation tomorrow, 35 still will not have heat. Department officials said they are providing warm meals and urging students to bundle up against the cold, which has become bitter this week.

Polakow-Suransky said the schools that are closed for an additional day will have to make the time up in the future, posing a scheduling challenge that grows as the days without classes stack up. But he said the department was trying whenever possible to urge students to learn outside of school.

And with a potentially damaging northeaster bearing down on the city, he emphasized that the department’s recovery has proceded swiftly given the magnitude of destruction after Sandy. On Sunday, more than 200 schools were without power and 65 schools were expected to have to relocated.

“Obviously the reason that we’re moving heaven and earth and why we’re pushing so hard to get these schools open is we want to have students in school,” Polakow-Suransky said.

  • Clay

    NYC DOE = incompetent

  • common sense

    would it really have hurt to open next monday so there was time to plan properly?

  • I noticed that…

    Our children are going to be traumatized by all the relocation from their beloved schools.  Is the DoE willing to be accountable for not being more prepared for the unforeseen?  Our children have suffered enough; please don’t make them suffer more.

  • Gabriela Fighetti

    Hurricane Sandy was an unprecedented disaster. The officials at the DOE, many of whom were also affected by the storm, have been working tirelessly to restore services and get students safely back in school. To question their competence, or whether they are working in the best interests of NYC’s parents, children and teachers, is insensitive. As someone currently working in the school system in New Orleans, and dealing with the ramifications of a storm that happened 7 years ago, I commend all of their efforts and wish them luck in an impossible situation.

  • Queens Teacher

    Our relocation site is one hour from our home school. Tell me how this benefits the kids.

  • BloombergMustGo

    That is your view from the outside.  Had you been subjected to the relentless abuse of the Bloomberg/Walcott administration, and their constant claims of TEACHER incompetence, I doubt you would be feeling so generous.  They have proven that they live by the credo, “Do as I say, not as I do” as they demonstrate their massive incompetence.
    At this moment, any success in dealing with an impossible situation is due purely to the amazing efforts of the schools themselves including the teachers and administrators, in spite of the futile and innefective efforts of Bloomberg and company. 

  • Guest

    Yes- to the outside world, the DOE and their Principals who are trying to ruin our lives, look like benevolent saviours.
    But Bloomberg basically controls all three daily newspapers, has his own news service, has his own radio station, has his own TV station, has his own magazine, and has the investment community by the throat, because they have to use his terminal to make business decisions. Nothing gets out about how this animal has destroyed the public school system in NYC.
      Even the supposed “community” radio station, WNYC, has never supported us, for some reason. This never would’ve happened under Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani, because they didn’t have the unlimited resources this mayor has. 52% of the white, so-called “liberal” residents of this city are probably bigger racists than anyone in the South. The direct racial split in the vote in the Thompson/Bloomberg election proves that. Here, in NYC, we do it behind their backs, by re- electing a mayor who has us divide our students into categories like ,”Black, Hispanic, Asian,etc…and then treat the students as members of that group- as if they all were the same.
    Twenty or thirty years ago, that would have been seen as blatantly racist, but the so-called “experts” from the DOE have decided that they transcend
    such offenses.
    Besides, they can do whatever they want, because they know Bloomberg can prevet any leaks, as he practically owns the media.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CUQ43EUELKLEA7MOOHUX3LVI64 Lady From Venice

    Planning properly apparently does not seem to be embedded in the nature of the NYCDOE bureaucrats, OR in the man that is supposed to be in charge of the school system, e.g., Herr Bloomberg.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CUQ43EUELKLEA7MOOHUX3LVI64 Lady From Venice

    Or, the DOE could more appropriately be called the Department of MIS-Education, IMO.

  • Jill Bloomberg

    Park Slope Collegiate at the John Jay building made numerous requests to the DOE that we be allowed to welcome our students back to school on Wednesday at our site, at another DOE site or at a non-DOE site. We were denied our request. Opening was not a choice our school was allowed to make.

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