After getting no response from the Department of Education (DOE), Community Education Council 24 (CEC 24) is going rogue.
The council is urging parents to put their kids on a bus that they are not authorized to ride.
It’s an attempt to avoid a problem intersection at Laurel Hill Boulevard and 61st Street in Woodside that parents say is too dangerous to walk. But, after a walkthrough of that intersection, the DOE has been completely mum on the problem.
“This is shooting a shot over their bow,” said Bill Kregler, a CEC member who lives in a housing development adjacent to the intersection.
For months, parents have complained about the DOE’s decision to pull bus service from the Big Six Towers in Woodside to P.S. 229 in Maspeth.
Without the bus, students have to walk through the intersection at Laurel Hill Boulevard and 61st Street that has two offramps from the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, heavy truck traffic and high walls blocking sightlines.
Until two years ago, there was a variance that allowed students there onto a bus because the DOE agreed the intersection was too dangerous to walk through.
After reassessing the area though, the DOE pulled the variance. Adding to the frustration, a bus still stops blocks away at 60th Street and 47th Avenue. It goes directly to P.S. 229 carrying kids from lower grades.
Because the school is under a mile away, the DOE deems kids in higher grades old enough to walk to school themselves.
But parents say there is plenty of room on the bus. The students just need to be allowed to ride.
On Tuesday night, CEC members unanimously approved the resolution recommending parents put their kids on that bus without DOE approval.
“Basically this resolution came out of frustration of waiting,” Kregler said. He, parents, other CEC members and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer have been pressing the DOE about an answer for months with little effect.
Van Bramer said he has taken the issue all the way to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott who also promised to look into it.
But, like everyone else, the councilman hasn’t heard anything in about a month, he said.
“I support the parents and the CEC 100 percent in our ongoing effort to get the DOE to reverse this disasterous and potential fatal decision to suspend bus service,” Van Bramer said. “It’s the single worst decision that I have witnessed in my time as a council member and one of the most dangerous, reckless things that I have ever witnessed the Department of Education do.”
In March, two DOE officials inspected the intersection and walked the route kids must take to school. But they wouldn’t answer any questions from the press or parents.
A month later, Kregler said the CEC has heard nothing from them either.
The DOE also ignored questions sent from The Forum on Wednesday morning.
At a meeting in March, parents vented their frustration at Eric Goldstein, CEO of school support services, who came to answer questions about bus service.
There, he told parents that bus drivers don’t check documentation or ages about which students are allowed on buses and which aren’t.
Nick Comianni, CEC 24’s president, made a point of emphasizing this for parents at the meeting. Now, his point has been put on record in the resolution.
“We have no authority, but if you don’t put it on paper, it didn’t happen,” Kregler said, underscoring the fact that the CEC is an advisory body.
By Jeremiah Dobruck
j.dobruck@theforumnewsgroup.com
