New York City is now in the midst of a school bus strike, stranding more than 100,000 students.
As usual, each side blames the other for intransigence.
But there are a few facts that should be remembered for context.
The Bloomberg administration has had complete control of the school system since 2002 and negotiated all existing contracts.
In 2006, then Chancellor Joel Klein gave a contract for $15.8 million to business turnaround consultants Alvarez & Marsal to reorganize the transportation program. Some of the executives were paid $500 an hour (plus expenses). On January 31, 2007, the buses adopted the A&M schedule for the first time. It was the coldest day of the year. Thousands of children were left stranded on bitter-cold corners. It was chaos.
Chancellor Klein defended the choice of A&M, saying they had saved the city at least $50 million.
Presumably, this is the system that the mayor now finds intolerable and outrageously expensive.
Alvarez & Marsal were previously known for its work in St. Louis, where they ran the district like a business for one year, collected $5 million, and left, shortly before the state declared the district o be in such bad shape that the state took control.
A&M’s last school assignment was in DC, where Chancellor Kaya Henderson hired them to review test security procedures, though they had no experience doing that.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And, of course, A&M found no serious problems with test security procedures in DC.
http://prospect.org/article/nolas-failed-education-experiment
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/05/trial_on_firings_at_new_orlean.html
http://www.alvarezandmarsal.com/case-study-new-orleans-public-schools
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-04-02/a-turnaround-ace-for-new-orleans
Some history on Alvarez and Marsal in Louisiana – Beware!
note role of alvarez and marsal in Louisiana. One outline of that role is in Judge Ethel Simms Julien’s “Reasons for Judgment” from June 2012, in which she agrees that teachers and other school employees in New Orleans were wrongfully terminated following Hurricane Katrina. nopsejustice.org has link to this judgment, which includes detailed information about Alvarez and Marsal’s sweetheart deals in Louisiana and role in New Orleans Public Schools.
sorry–correct web address is nopsejustice.com for role of A & M in New Orleans and Lousiana.
I’d say there are more than a few other facts that should be remembered for context.
The New Orleans local school board was forced to hire A&M by the state superintendent of education to handle all the administrative duties of the school district several months before Hurricane Katrina. This came on the heels of the state claims that the local school district couldn’t account for $80 million of Title I funds, after a long audit all the funds practically accounted for and no money was missing. However A&M became the administrative manager for New Orleans school district at a $1.2 million a month rate. A month or so after Hurricane Katrina with all the public schools closed and most damaged, the local board gave A&M a new contract worth $24 million (increasing from $1.2 million to $2 million a month). This was justified by school board members saying that the increase was due the large amount of work A&M will have to do in managing the repair of the schools with FEMA.
Less than six months later, after the state took over 107 of the city’s schools buildings, the state hired A&M to oversee the repair (of the same damaged buildings) of school buildings with a $29 million contract. So A&M received two contracts totaling $53 million to do the basically the same work in New Orleans in less than months.
A&M did an excellent job, this past year the windows on the second and third floor of several damaged schools from Hurricane Katrina were finally boarded up. They had been open since August 2005 taking on rain, wind for seven years; DEMOLITION BY NEGLECT!!!
Thanks for sharing this important info. I recently visited New Orleans for the first time and was saddened to see beautiful old school buildings that have not been repaired or reopened all these years after Katrina, now I know why.
Clarification; A&M received the contracts totaling $53 million to do the same work in less than six months
People don’t know where their money goes so most of the talk is just ideological shouting back and forth.
@egbegb: Information needs to be free in this case!!!
Debt Excess Even Lives in Texas http://t.co/cC3vVaaG
For example school busses stop every 200 feet or so in my community to pick and take kids. That translates to longer bus driver hours and more gas. No accountability.
Truer words never spoken. In one of his interviews this week, Cordiello blamed high costs on inefficiencies created by the city’s poor management of bus routes. The last time the city tried to consolidate routes, Local 1181 opposed it on the ground that fewer routes meant fewer drivers.
Who are they friends with and how much have they collected for doing nothing except for destruction and transference of wealth?
It was no coincidence that A&M was hired to investigate Rhee. What they did to the bus schedule here in NYC was criminal. Some children from the same family were left off the schedule. Yet none of this came up during the mayoral campaign.
“What they did to the bus schedule here in NYC was criminal.”
Unfortunately, the DOE screws up on an hourly basis. In its finest hours, it’s treading water and doing no harm. The rest of the time it’s providing fodder for students of organizational failure. Given that there are more 7,000 routes, who could really be surprised that “[s]ome children from the same family were left off the schedule”?
BTW, leaving aside NYC’s institutional incompetence, for most of the last 30 years (and I suspect even today), the leadership of the Local 1181 has *literally* been “criminal.” As in “the mafia.” As in “I would not have typed any of these words if I were using my actual identity.” This history is a stain on labor interests in NYC education. And only in NYC could Staten Island Republican thugs find common ground with liberal (and more radical than liberal) Democrats.
When did NYC first privatize pupil transportation services? I understand that Varsity had the single contract with the city until 1970ish. Are the discussions above another example of privatization of public services showing its true colors? Are we going to be arguing about outrageous costs, inefficiencies and corruption in charter schools in 30 years? Sooner?