Okay, so the NYC School Bus Strike - what a debacle!
The one bright spot in it all is that the piece with did with NBC/4 New York turned out so well -
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/School-Bus-Strike-NYC-Disabled-Special-Needs-187030171.html
I haven't figured out how to directly insert the video - something to figure out with all my spare time. Ha! There is a lot to cover here so I'm going to try to break it up into bite-sized pieces:
HOW WE ENDED UP ON NBC NEWS
After watching two or three reports on the news about how the strike would affect people I got kind of annoyed. I saw Manhattan parents who would have to take a bus with their kids and get to work late, I saw families in Brooklyn that had to carpool - and not to say that's not going to create total chaos in their lives, but fully 1/3 of the students affected by this are special needs kids for whom the solutions provided by the City were impractical or totally worthless. Why wasn't the news covering that?
So, in my usual disgruntled way, I went to their website and shot off a quick email outlining my situation and wondering why they didn't cover something like that. Within 5 minutes I had 3 different emails back from NBC asking me if they could do an interview. Amazing.
So, below is our situation, after that some interesting developments today -
I was going to do a bit about the strike itself, but too complicated and I have to do some other stuff during this work time. But you can Google if you like. It's extremely complicated - and part of the question is if the two sides can even negotiate with each other at all... and the truth is, not really (point for the City) but if this going to end then they'd better start figuring out how to talk about the problems (point for the drivers).
OUR SITUATION
Noa takes a bus to school in Westchester everyday. The drive up can be 45 minutes on a good day or an hour and a half (or more) on a really bad day - or if there is an accident (which is pretty much everyday somewhere along her route). When the buses went strike, the City offered free Metro Cards (useless, we can't get there on public transportation); reimbursement for taxis (not realistic on so many levels I can't even begin) or reimbursement for a car service - the only choice we can consider BUT...
- Getting a wheelchair car service is tight even on a good day, with nearly 60,000 disabled kids looking to get to school there just aren't enough of them! We're lucky, Noa has good trunk control and her chair doesn't contain features (like communications devices) that make it urgent to use her chair - and the school offered to lend us one they had here. SO we can get a regular car.
- But because Noa is so young, she cannot take a car service herself, so either Ben or I has to go with her. Once we're up here, going back to the City just doesn't make sense since we'll only get in 2 or 3 hours at work before we'd have to get back into another car and go out to pick her up. So whoever takes her out has to stay. This is somewhat workable - until I start to teach in a little over a week - because I can't show up an hour late to teach a two hour class!
- BUT not taking her to school is also problematic - because I still can't go to work unless I can find someone to watch her, or Ben can spell me, which is what we did yesterday when we both had appointments that we couldn't miss.
- Another problem - THE COST - although the City says it will reimburse, you have to fill out weekly forms and who knows how quickly they'll pay you back and the cost ONE WAY for this trip today (including tolls) was over $90!! That Ben and I can afford to do this at all probably puts us in the minority - and I certainly don't think we'd be willing to do it more than a few days a week until we had a sense of when we'd get reimbursed!
INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS TODAY
In my continuing my stream of disgruntled emails, I sent an email to the Office of Transportation - I explained them the situation and also made clear how much it would cost the City to do this Car Service thing for us. They won't reimburse a rental car - which would cost far less (though if you have a car you can get gas reimbursed). Much to my surprise I heard back!
They called this morning and wondered if it might work to see if we could get together some other families coming up here into one wheelchair van service - with parents taking turns as bus matrons. I said heck yes - I'd do that once a week if I could still teach the other days! Of course they can't be me other parent info, or the routes - nor can the school - but I said I'd help in any way I could.
Then she says she'll need to figure out who to talk to at the school - I was at the school of course, so I just put the right two people on the phone right there! We'll see if it works out. It was funny listening from my end. The side I could here was MB saying, "How many of parent? All of them! I can't think of anyone who wouldn't want - none of our kids are here. They all need it!"
The school has 90 students. Yesterday they only had about 20 (it was also a partial day due to snow) and they were all inpatients at the hospital. Today that have 39 - mostly the addition of local students whose parents could drive them - and crazy me. I think I'm the only Manhattan parent who made it.
MY DAY TODAY
I'm grateful to the school for letting me set up here and get some work done. It's really more work than I'd have gotten done at home while trying to take care of Noa at the same time. I'm just kind of stuck up here is all. The car service was great - except for being about 1/2 late - and we'll see how the trip home goes. I'll probably do this tomorrow because I know I can't do it next Tuesday because of a meeting so should just do it when I can.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Welcome 2013
So here I am, sitting in the Parents' Office at Noa's school - working remotely thanks to the NYC School Bus Strike, but more on that in a bit - I'm going to try to do with in order.
I wanted to share a couple of videos before I get into all that -
First, this great video of Noa pushing the grocery cart home from the fabulous new Fairway Market that just opened around the corner. We've been trying to take Noa on walks that involve stuff that Mommy and Daddy have to do - which any regular kid would have to put up with - but just walking that far with Noa is a trial - much less trying to walk through a store and - yikes! - waiting in line. But genius Daddy had a great idea, which was to bring a rolly cart with us so Noa could try pushing it (and we could carry groceries home, because once you have Noa with you your hands are totally full!). Noa enjoys pushing her wheelchair or stroller sometimes, and she loved pushing the grocery cart - so it was a great discovery!!
It was great because it truly saved Ben and I coming home sore and/or in pain from having our arms pulled on constantly. I will admit that trying to shop was a bit difficult - it really took both of us: one of us to work with Noa so that the other could actually look at the shelves - she's not steady enough to stand on her own and can really throw herself around dramatically when she's impatient. We didn't want to cause a gigantic clean-up in aisle 1, 2, 3, etc...! And of course, trying to get through a NYC Fairway is plenty challenging without a blind child pushing a rolling cart.
The only challenge was the check out. Noa didn't like standing still while the groceries were getting scanned - though we were lucky to get a good cashier who kept telling her what a good job she was doing. And once we had some bags she could help us put into the cart, she was much better.
I suspect Noa will be making more trips to the market with us now. That was a great success for everyone!
The other video is actually from Christmas - a composition Noa played at Grammy and Grampy's but it's like many she is working on now at home. It was at my folks that I realized that one of the reasons Noa wasn't playing as much was because we set her piano up at the stander. So now we set it up so she can sit and play at home again which she much prefers.
The video is a bit long, if you cut to the end there's a nice finish. If you watch for a bit you can see that she's making sounds verbally - her way of singing - but also just some sound effects that are fun. It's fun little clip.
I wanted to share a couple of videos before I get into all that -
First, this great video of Noa pushing the grocery cart home from the fabulous new Fairway Market that just opened around the corner. We've been trying to take Noa on walks that involve stuff that Mommy and Daddy have to do - which any regular kid would have to put up with - but just walking that far with Noa is a trial - much less trying to walk through a store and - yikes! - waiting in line. But genius Daddy had a great idea, which was to bring a rolly cart with us so Noa could try pushing it (and we could carry groceries home, because once you have Noa with you your hands are totally full!). Noa enjoys pushing her wheelchair or stroller sometimes, and she loved pushing the grocery cart - so it was a great discovery!!
It was great because it truly saved Ben and I coming home sore and/or in pain from having our arms pulled on constantly. I will admit that trying to shop was a bit difficult - it really took both of us: one of us to work with Noa so that the other could actually look at the shelves - she's not steady enough to stand on her own and can really throw herself around dramatically when she's impatient. We didn't want to cause a gigantic clean-up in aisle 1, 2, 3, etc...! And of course, trying to get through a NYC Fairway is plenty challenging without a blind child pushing a rolling cart.
The only challenge was the check out. Noa didn't like standing still while the groceries were getting scanned - though we were lucky to get a good cashier who kept telling her what a good job she was doing. And once we had some bags she could help us put into the cart, she was much better.
The other video is actually from Christmas - a composition Noa played at Grammy and Grampy's but it's like many she is working on now at home. It was at my folks that I realized that one of the reasons Noa wasn't playing as much was because we set her piano up at the stander. So now we set it up so she can sit and play at home again which she much prefers.
The video is a bit long, if you cut to the end there's a nice finish. If you watch for a bit you can see that she's making sounds verbally - her way of singing - but also just some sound effects that are fun. It's fun little clip.
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