A pupil’s revolution
he much-anticipated reopening of the nation’s largest school district has been delayed, twice. As New York City parents scramble through another round of patching together child care and work schedules, there’s one plan we won’t be rearranging: how to get to school. That’s because many of us had no real plan for that to begin with.
Instead, many of us waiting for in-person school have been hedging, hoping that the transportation piece will fall into place when the time comes. But winging school transportation is an untenable stance in a city where even kindergartners routinely cross district lines for school. If New York City is serious about safe, in-person classrooms, we can’t keep sidestepping the question of how to get there.
My family lives a mile and a half away from my kids’ elementary school, which makes us eligible for a yellow school bus. But New York City school buses will run at reduced capacity to allow for social distancing, and like other parents I know, we’ve still received no word on when (or whether) we’ll get a seat.
Taking a city bus to school is another possibility for my children, and commuting to class sans grown-up for the first time is practically a rite of passage for New York City middle schoolers. Studies of subway use in Europe and Asia suggest that responsible, maskeduse of public transportation may be less likely to spread COVID-19 than many New Yorkers fear.
But the verdict is still out on whether an influx of commuters returning to school and work will change that. A recent Newsweek survey does not inspire confidence: one out of six voters reported never wearing masks while taking public transportation, that survey found. Yes, Gov. Cuomo and the MTA have announced $50 fines for failure to comply with the rules, but no one expects or wants them targeting kids.
It’s difficult to imagine a transportation mode more suited for a post-COVID landscape than biking, which is why leaders in cities including Paris, Berlin, and Bogota considered it their urgent duty to fast-track plans for protected bike lanes, which use physical barriers to separate bicyclists from cars.
New York City already has many miles of protected lanes, which allow even new cyclists to be safer and more comfortable riding on city streets. But most of our lanes are not connected to each other, which means they’re not a reliable means of commuting.
The mayor’s transportation advisory council has urged the city to link these lanes for effective socially-distanced transportation. Meanwhile, City Controller Scott Stringer recently proposed that a network of protected lanes be created around 50 New York City high school buildings, along with free bicycles or Citi Bike memberships for low-income high school students. That’s a start, but 50 is a long way from 1,800.
This summer, the city offered a less ambitious alternative in a school reopening plan: it implied that more families should drive to school — a nonsolution for a city where most households (including mine) don’t own cars. And that’s not to mention that inexperienced drivers swarming schools coupled with the increased congestion and pollution are among the last things we could hope for during this time when an entire coast of our country is literally on fire, in part thanks to prioritizing cars over the environment.
We can and must do better. To start, the city should begin putting into action the recommendations from the mayor’s surface traffic advisory council, which earlier this month sounded the alarm on the need for a post-coronavirus transportation vision amid “growing funding gaps for public transportation, a rise in fatalities and injuries from traffic violence, and ballooning car ownership.”
And as Shabazz Stuart, CEO of Oonee, which provides free bike parking, told me for a CityLab story, we parents must move off the sidelines. There are simple things we can do immediately, like urging our kids’ schools to set aside space for scooters and bikes, or helping to organize “walking school buses,” where guardians take turns walking groups of neighborhood kids to school and back.
We need to also let our elected officials know that we need more options.
Not long ago, despite Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza’s lack of interest, a parent-led petition urging New York City to move learning outdoors made the rounds on local online bulletin boards. Some key local elected officials quickly embraced the cause, and now outdoor learning will be part of our school system’s new reality.
If schools and parents can pave the path for outdoor classrooms in a matter of weeks, we should surely be able to help create safer, more convenient options for getting to school.