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New York School Bus Drivers on Strike

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Tens of thousands of New York City children who usually ride school buses took subways, taxis and private cars to school Wednesday as more than 8,000 bus drivers and aides went on strike to keep their jobs.

School bus drivers and supporters walked a picket line in front of a bus depot in New York on Wednesday.

“I love my job and I don’t want to be looking for another one,” bus driver Robert Behrens, who manned a picket line in Queens told AP.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said police were called after some strikers blocked gates to keep buses from leaving and warned, “We won’t permit that kind of reprehensible conduct.”

Union head Michael Cordiello said the drivers will strike until Bloomberg and the city agree to put a job security clause back into their contract.

“I came to urge the mayor to resolve this strike,” said Cordiello, president of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. “It is within his power to do so.”

But Bloomberg said the strike “is about job guarantees that the union just can’t have.”

After the union announced a strike Monday, city officials said they would hand out transit passes to students who can get to school on subways and city buses and reimburse parents who must take taxis or drive private cars.

Peter Curry’s 7-year-old daughter, Maisy, is in a wheelchair and is usually picked up by a bus with a mechanical lift. On Wednesday, he drove her from lower Manhattan to her school in the Chelsea neighborhood.

“It means transferring her to the car, breaking down the wheelchair, getting here, setting up the wheelchair, transferring her from the car, when normally she would just wheel right into the school bus,” Curry said. “She’s on oxygen. There’s a lot of equipment that has to be moved and transferred also.”

On Staten Island, Tangaline Whiten was more than 45 minutes late delivering her second-grade son to Staten Island Community Charter School, after first dropping off her daughter at Public School 60 about six miles away.

She said the distance and the extra traffic on the road made the prospect of a long strike upsetting, because it means her son would be consistently late. If the strike lasts, she said she’ll consider carpooling.

“Most of the parents where I’m at are working parents, so they’re finding it difficult to transport their kids, and especially to pick them up,” Whiten said. “I’m just fortunate that I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

Wednesday’s walkout was by the largest bus drivers’ union; some bus routes served by other unions were operating. The city Department of Education said approximately 3,000 bus routes out of a total of 7,700 were running.

Most of the city’s roughly 1.1 million public school students take public transportation or walk to school.

Those who rely on the buses include 54,000 special education students and others who live far from schools or transportation. They also include students who attend specialized school programs outside of their neighborhoods.

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