Well, I'm sure to the extent that we can keep 1201 doing what 3028 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET they're doing, we certainly want to encourage it, but I guess the thought occurs to me, and I would say for the record here that, I mean, it is somewhat stunning, if not ironic and possibly insulting that, you know, behind the scenes for the moment and soon to be out in full public, there will be a tremendous amount of discussion for the funding and construction of over half a billion dollars worth of stadiums here in Philadelphia, while at the same time, we are having difficulty struggle to fund high school sports activities, and those two things do not make sense. And so I think in any discussion about the professional teams, we will certainly have to raise the issue about our high school sports programs in that context of that discussion.
I, of course, concur in the notion that our priorities in this state are seriously out of whack -- having nothing to do or limited to stadiums. But there is an interesting just sort of coincidental connection between expenditures for sports and expenditures for sports stadiums. I understand the connection. 3029 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET
Are there any other questions or comments from members of the committee? (No further questions for Dr. Hornbeck at this time.)
Is there anyone else to testify? Do you want to take a seat please. (Bonnie Brooks comes forward).
Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
My name is Bonnie Brooks, and I'm a School Aide I for a Philadelphia School Board. I ride a de-seg. bus, I also work inside the building. What has not been made clear here is that incident reports and pink slips that are written up on kids go inside the buildings, and that's where they're left. They never get to 3030 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET Transportation or downtown anywhere; they go inside. And if a kid -- if something happens to a kid, a fight or anything to that effect, it goes inside the building. They may give the kid a lunch detention, they may not do anything. It sits in a drawer somewhere. Along with the fact, all the incident reports that my president offered today are from buses that don't have aides on them. That bus has anywhere from 40 to 60 children on it. There is no way, shape or form that that driver can come down the road with that many kid and bring 'em in safe without having someone there with them. Along with the fact that once we step off the buses and go inside the buildings, we now become classroom assistants. We are MTAs, we are the security. And once they pull us off of these buses, that's a body that will not be in that building. So that's less security that the children have. I can't believe that they can allow this to happen and say that these children are coming in safe. 3031 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET As far as the cameras go, yeah, they have cameras, they have boxes. There aren't any cameras in there. For every garage out here, there may be two cameras. I come out of a garage called Passyunk -- there's more than 300 buses in that garage and only 2 real cameras. There's been incidents where if a fight breaks out, the driver cannot stop in the middle of the boulevard and stop these children from fighting so somebody's beat to death by the time he gets to the side, pull it over and then go back and try to settle the kids down. So I can't for the life of me understand where they're saying that our jobs are not important. Now, they came up with cluster leaders, trainers for clusters. They make way more than we make, but we're not important. And we're the ones with the kids every day. I spend more time with the kids then the principal or a teacher. I get up at -- I'm on the bus at 7 o'clock in the morning, and I'm not off of that bus again until quarter to 6. That's the end of my day every day, along with the 7 hours I put inside of a building for this small amount of money that I make. 3032 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET And I really want people to understand exactly what we do. They give you one piece. And every day, something goes on on these buses that don't have anybody on them. The kids is hanging out windows, there's people throwing things, all kinds of things going. You have to be there to see it, and a camera will not do it. It has to be another body along with that driver. And then along with the things that we do inside of the building, and I don't even know whether or not Mr. Hornbeck knows this I. Know we try to tell 'em.
We've heard of bus aides and bus attendants. Is there a difference or are they the same?
The difference is, the bus attendants basically ride the physically handicapped buses, for the most part. They get on buses with TMR children or children that are in wheelchairs. The school aide rides a de-seg. bus. These are the children that are bused all over the city from west Philly to Northeast, from Northeast back down to West Philly. Those buses have 40 to 60 kids on 'em. 3033 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET
Right, from grades 1 to 8th. And they ride anywhere from one hour to two hours before they even get to school.
Yeah, it could be that long. It is a long ride and it's a long day, and our responsibilities don't end once we get 'em off the buses. So when you look at pulling this person off the bus, okay, you solve one problem, but what happens to what we do when we get inside of the building? When I get inside the building, I do lunch detentions, I do hall duties. I even take care of the pink slips that come through. So I can tell you that 500 pink slips came in today, they went to their principal, and they sitting in the box, and nothing happens. Or maybe if you push hard enough and it gets bad enough, they might pull a kid off for one day, or they may give him a lunch detention. But they don't go anywhere. And he doesn't know that. 3034 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET And I think that if the parents knew exactly what happens, that they would figure out a way to keep us all there instead of sending us someplace else or not having us at all, or no job, period.
Okay, thank you so much for coming in to testify. Mr. Doyle, you had your hand raised. Did you want to make a statement?
A couple of things briefly I would like to say. There's two letters I have here. One's from Joseph (unintelligible), who's the coordinator in the Transportation Division, and he sent it to John Lombardi, the director. (Reading.) As requested, I did follow up with the same school districts that 3035 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET participated in our on March bus attendants survey. Following questions were posed: Do you bus regular education children long distances? (Read long distance as being more than 60 minutes each way.) Question 2. Other than the bus driver, is there any other adult supervisor on the school bus? Over all, I found that most districts -- most districts -- do not bus their students long distances. That's over 60 minutes. So that doesn't say that they don't bus them under 60 minutes. They exclude the over -- they make it exclusively long-distance busing. Districts in Virginia, for example, are limited by law to a 60-minute maximum ride. In Portland, Oregon; St. Louis, Missouri; Houston, Texas; though, do to cross-country busing to magnet schools, some routes did exceed the 60-minute running time. Yet no district surveyed used bus attendants or other adult supervisors, excluding the bus driver, on these regular educational routes. The questions they did not ask is: Did 3036 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET you have attendants in the past? Have your incident referrals gone up? Do you intend to hire attendants in the future? I mean, limiting it to these two basic questions is not a survey, although this is what they sent to us and said here's the survey of what's going on. The other slip, which I believe you have, behavioral referrals on regular education bus routes. School year '95-'96, number of attendants removed not available, 182 referrals. School year '96-'97, number of attendants removed, 46. Behavioral referrals, 125. A decrease of 31 percent. 1997-'98, number of attendants removed, another 46. Number of behavioral referrals, 239. That's an increase of 91 percent. And then '96-'97, not available on bus attendants removed. Behavioral referrals, 287, up from 239. In '97-'98, 477, when they removed 55 more. That's up another 66 percent. So I think the figures are not -- they don't equate out to what the Superintendent said. The more you remove, the higher those referrals 3037 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET get, and it's going to continue and continue and continue. Like I said, for the entire school year of '97-'98, they have 477 referrals. I showed you 477 today from the north region, and we still have to go to June 22nd for school. It's not like school's over today or this weekend. We still have months of school to go, and that's just from the north region. As Bonnie said, these referrals, these incident reports, they're getting stuffed somewhere -- whether it's done purposely or not, I don't know, but they're going in somebody's drawer and they're dying on the vine. And if we could get every one of them, I guarantee you, I would have had a table full of incident reports in here today. And if you read some of 'em, you go in there and kids are being assaulted, beat up, three and four kids on one child. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy and, I believe, irresponsible, and it has to stop. We have to keep these members, these employees on the buses, or it's going to -- it's going to take a disaster or 3038 3/17/99 WHOLE COMM./SCHOOL DIST. BUDGET somebody's going to have to get killed, then people, I guess, will wake up, you know. And that's what I don't want to see happen. Okay?
Thank you. Is there anyone else to testify? (No response.)
Seeing no 13 one, the committee will stand in recess until Wednesday, March 24th, at 2 p.m. Thank you. (Adjourned at 3:23 p.m.) - - - 3039 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Wednesday, March 17, 1999, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COUNCIL COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE BUDGET HEARINGS BILL NO. 990026, 990027, 990028 __________________________________, JOSEPHINE CARDILLO, Registered Professional Reporter