I’m amazed at how Machiavallian this is. Perhaps I shouldn’t be. So basically Gantt used bus cams as a bargaining chip to get the state off the hook from having to chip in more for student metrocards? And that Assembly video in which bus cams were given a rubber stamp approval was just a front for the real maneuvering that had taken place behind the scenes? Correct me if I’m wrong here.

“So basically Gantt used bus cams as a bargaining chip to get the state off the hook from having to chip in more for student metrocards?”

No that’s what Silver did and forced Gantt to swallow it.

I don’t see how borrowing more is a “benefit” to the MTA. They shouldn’t be borrowing another dime. And having the legislature agree for the MTA to borrow more is a concession? Please.

Well, I know how the MTA can recoup more money. Here are some Federal Transit Administration regulations:

“Urbanized Area Formula Program (Section 5307) grantees must allow 1) elderly persons, 2) persons with disabilities, and 3) Medicare cardholders to ride fixed route services during the off-peak hours for a fare that is not more than one-half the base fare charged other persons during the peak hours.”

“The fares charged elderly persons, persons with disabilities, and Medicare cardholders cannot exceed one-half the fare that is charged for the same trip during the peak hours.”

That’s right, in exchange for federal money, the federal government requires that seniors get a half fare discount during off peak hours. Not all hours. Not rush hours. That was a gift from Pataki, with the cost charged to — now. Now that people who were not a party to the transaction are paying the cost — the interest on the borrowed money — it’s time to take back the gift.

Excellent analysis, Noah. I wish this could be printed in all the major dailies for the wider public to understand.

I don’t know. I’m as big a transit nut as anyone, but really, I’d rather have the state use the money for education than transit (if given a choice).

I think this idea that everything should stay in the system – that transportation fees should only go to transit and roads, just strikes me as a bit naive. All money goes to the general fund and then it’s split up (with most of it going to pensions, according to Larry).

I think we might be able to craft a better message if we changed this. How about we raise on-street parking fees to the market rate and call it “Parking for Schools”? It worked for the lottery.

Higher debt ceiling? Nice.

Should add its also about preserving the insanity of yellow busing which costs $7k per NYC student/yr. for a total of over a billion. So, it’s shifting costs from the beneficiaries of that busing to transit riders.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/03/04/to-save-student-metrocards-trim-the-fat-from-bloated-bus-costs/

Jason: some parents are hypersensitive about what good schools are. The 90-minute travel times aren’t even the worst of it. I read an article a few years ago about how in a gentrifying Queens neighborhood, the white parents asked to organize a separate school in the same building as the current, majority-minority school.

The really high spending is in the suburbs, which clock in about $25,000 per student in the favored quarters. The city is now up to about $17,000.

While there’s plenty of room to cut spending there, it has to be done on the federal level by change in regulations. On the state and local level there’s competition for teachers, curricula are constrained by the textbooks that Texas and California approve, etc. The state just isn’t powerful enough to tell Westchester and the North Shore that whatever spending level is good enough for the city and for Upstate is good enough for them.

Yes, NYC has above-average spending. It also has one of the best inner-city districts in the country.

Anecdotally, the teachers’ perception of living costs seems to be different from the general numbers. While on average the suburbs are more expensive than the city, for the middle class, from which teachers are drawn, the opposite is often true. So at equal salary, teachers would by default go to the suburbs. In reality, salaries are not equal; they’re much higher in the suburbs.

Bolwerk:

My source on spending is School Matters. New York’s spending went up tremendously in the last decade, as part of Bloomberg’s reforms – only Bloomberg’s selling the improved results as a management success. While favored-quarter suburbs such as Manhasset and Scarsdale have plateaued, the city still has a long way to go to catch up.

States vary a lot in spending, but I wouldn’t use California as a good model. Its public school system is among the worst in the country, and has been deteriorating since the passage of Prop 13. Even conservatives acknowledge the relative decline of California’s education, only they blame multiculturalism, Hispanic immigration, and bilingual education – in other words, national trends that do not distinguish California from states that did not post similar declines.

While the textbook industry is based in New York, its textbooks tend to be national lowest-common-denominator products, geared for the diametrically opposed political correctness textbook adoption standards in Texas and California.

But textbooks are a national quality of education problem. The cost issue comes from the facts that districts compete for teachers, and that the richest districts also hire many more teachers than they need. This ensures that many of the inner city and rural teachers are marginal.

Education is almost a good parallel to transit. Most of the cost is labor, and labor’s ability to make the jobs sacrosanct has gone a long way towards making the system hard to reform. Anyway, take your pick (using the outdated map) from the states. Many that have “good” (well, I prefer the term above-average, since I’m not sure any are especially good) education systems do it by spending a lot less than NYC or NYS.

As for teachers, NYC certainly has its share of marginal and unneeded ones. That rubber room tactic is BS. And top-heavy administration doesn’t help either – it often simply takes experienced teachers out of the classroom.

Like by everything the problem somes from the leadership and the corruption . I do not think that mta should pay for metrocard just out of the reason that i think education is the problem of the board of education, but the real problem is, that no one what to take responsebility for what their messed up in the past and for sure did not learnd anything. Did you all heard that MTA just approved for themselfe $30000.00 in homedelivery of magazins? That there hired someone to help to save them money but she has the worst record for this (you can find this information on mockerpix). Than Nancy Shevells (she is a boardmember in MTA) father got investigated 1988 from the us supreem court for connection to the mafja and bribing the teamster? He by the way is vice president in NJ transit which just raised the fares %25 and laid employees of. Who appointed those people? How you say, smells like corruption, looks like corruption mostlikly it is corruption