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In the self portrait, her wild, curly blonde hair is tousled to one side of her face, the two sharp arrows from her lip ring poke out the left corner of her mouth and her eyebrows arch upward in a look of skepticism.

Samantha Morales said drawing this picture was the hardest thing she’s ever done.

“I was backing out of it so many times because in the picture I had curly hair, and it was really hard to draw,” she said. “But it made me learn not to give up on anything.”

Morales is a student at ROADS Charter School 2 in the Bronx, a charter transfer school that enrolls 15- to 17-year-olds who are overage and under-credited and have either been homeless, in jail, in foster care or child protective services, or who have dropped out of high school. (more…)

Assistant teacher Miguelina Valeria takes attendance as students exit the bus at Manhattan’s P721 Wednesday.

Five weeks ago, what happened at P721 in Manhattan on Wednesday would not have seemed extraordinary: Yellow buses pulled up by the main entrance and assistant teacher Miguelina Valerio took attendance and greeted students as they headed into school.

But after a bus drivers’ strike that lasted over a month, the yellow buses marked the end of nightmarish commutes for many parents and, for many students with special needs, a long-awaited return to class.

P721 is a District 75 school that provides occupational training to high school students. During the strike, Valerio said, only 70 or 80 students came to school each day out of a student body of 200. “More than half the students were missing,” she said. “Little by little they’re coming back.” (more…)

The city is taking new steps to get students to school after a full week without regular school bus service.

With attendance in schools for students with disabilities below two-thirds for the fifth straight day, the Department of Education is moving both to help families with transportation and to get new bus drivers on the road faster.

Department officials announced today that they had revised the terms of the contracts that they plan to offer bus companies so that the companies can begin transporting students sooner than Sept. 1, the original date the new contracts were supposed to begin. It was the department’s omission of seniority protections from the contract terms that led the school bus drivers union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, to call a strike last week.

The department also unveiled details of a new initiative, first announced at a meeting about special education last week, to assist families with transportation costs. (more…)

City Councilman Robert Jackson, an original plaintiff in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, joined advocates to renew their push to secure funding from the state for high-need schools.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott was not the only one fretting about the city’s school funding today.

While Walcott was warning about the potential loss of new funds, longtime advocates were preparing to board a bus for Albany to call for the state to settle an old tab. (more…)