Trial testimony reveals money wasn't a factor in city's rejecting variance
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The money was there - they just didn't want to spend it on busing Staten Island students.
A week before the City Council approved this year's budget in June, the Department of Education (DOE) suddenly had an influx of money in its budget, thanks to an 11th-hour deal that saved the agency from having to foot the bill for 300,000 free or half-fare student MetroCards. That deal freed up millions to restore money to budget items slated to be cut - like the variance that provided yellow buses for 3,000 seventh- and eighth-grade students on the Island.
Alan Gartner, chief of staff to Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development, conveyed that message to his boss in a June 22 e-mail. The e-mail was read aloud yesterday during Gartner's testimony in a trial to restore the bus cuts in state Supreme Court in the former home port in Stapleton.
The trial regarding school bus service continues Monday. "Just had a call from [Larian Angelo, Deputy Director of the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget]. Given the latest developments, they have funds so that all of the contingent cuts don't have to be made," he wrote.
Gartner then asked whether Walcott had a "preference" as to which cuts he wanted to restore, listing the Island bus variance, a school lunch program or "Learning to Work," a GED and career training program.Walcott's response was not included in the testimony.
It appeared the DOE had already decided by then that the bus variance was not going to be restored. That was clear in the response to a June 8 e-mail from DOE press officer Anne Forte to Kathleen Grimm, Deputy Chancellor for Finance and Administration, and her chief of staff, Jeff Shear.
"We're getting a lot of queries about this - will we restore bus funding if we get more money from the state?" Ms. Forte asked.
"We can't say we will restore the busing cuts," Shear responded. "We are facing a lot of cuts and there could be more. Allowing seventh- and eighth-graders to ride on buses with younger siblings triggers demands for more buses at various places on Staten Island."
The e-mails add more evidence that top officials in the DOE were determined to remove the bus variance because it constituted "special treatment" to Staten Island -- and that it was not really about saving money, as both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have asserted.
At the time of Gartner's June e-mail, the state, city and MTA had just resolved a dispute over paying for free student MetroCards. The MTA had threatened to end an agreement in which the city paid a flat fee of $45 million for an unlimited number of cards; without the agreement, the city would have had to pay for each student's card separately. Providing MetroCards for thousands of students under those conditions would have cost more than the yellow bus service, an analysis by one of Ms. Grimm's aides found.
However, the cost of those cards apparently was not a determining factor -- the DOE sent letters to principals informing them they were eliminating yellow buses to seventh- and eighth-graders a month before the MetroCard dispute was settled.
Other e-mails and testimony from DOE officials suggested the agency was unclear how much money eliminating the variance would save. Estimates ranged from $1.4 to $6.87 million.
But there was one point of agreement for officials who testified during the first four days of the trial. When asked why the DOE gave a variance to bus seventh- and eighth-graders on the Island, when it normally only buses students up to sixth grade, Gartner repeated an answer given by each of his colleagues. "I believe it was part of a political deal," he said.
The trial is scheduled to resume Monday.