FiDi School for Disabled Children Cites Danger from Scofflaws Who Are Above the Law
The principal of a Lower Manhattan school that serves severely disabled children says the lives of his students are being endangered by lawlessness on the part of police officers and other government officials.
Dr. Randall Glading presides over the Hawthorne Country Day School, which is located within the historic Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway. The private school, which last summer relocated from smaller quarters on William Street, is tailored to children (ages five to 21) who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, speech and language impairments, and multiple other disabilities.
“When we moved to the Woolworth Building, we looked at Barclay Street,” he recalls, “and we worked with the Department of Transportation [DOT] to change the parking signs on north side of Barclay, to accommodate our buses. We were ecstatic. We thought, ‘this is going to work.’” In view of the needs of Hawthorne’s students, the DOT agreed to install signs along Barclay Street that prohibit stopping, standing, or parking, from 7am to 7pm. This was intended to create space for school buses serving Hawthorne students. Instead, it had the unintended effect of creating a free parking lot for cars displaying placards issued by government agencies.
“Little did we know,” Dr. Glading says, “that agencies would put their placards in car windows, sneer at us, and say, ‘I can park here. I’m on the job.’ I respect the police. But they are preventing safe access for our students. We have to double park our buses and escort our students through the traffic, to get to the sidewalk. It’s extremely unsafe.”
“Then traffic agents tell us, ‘we cannot ticket those cars. Those cars cannot be towed. They can park whenever they want,’” Dr. Glading says.
“We have about 15 small buses that come every day. Our students are escorted on and off the buses every morning and afternoon. Some of our kids are severely disabled,” he says. “Some are non-verbal.”
The conditions on Barclay Street between Broadway and Church Street are acute, even by the standards of local congestion in Lower Manhattan. Barclay is the street used by much of the traffic entering Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge. It is also on the route of the M9 bus, as well as the approach used by limousines and hired cars pulling up to the front door of the Four Seasons Hotel.
When buses carrying Hawthorne students are forced to double-park on Barclay Street in the morning and afternoon rush hours, the single lane of traffic largely comes to a standstill. This motivates some drivers to attempt squeezing through the remaining space, often with mere inches of clearance. When a truck tried this maneuver in December, it crushed the front end of one of the Hawthorne buses. “None of the kids I was driving were hurt,” says bus driver Dulce Suriel, “but it could easily have turned out differently.”
The tight squeeze on Barclay also leads to frayed tempers. Luis Barros, a senior special educator at Hawthorne, recalls being shoved out of the way by a limousine driver picking up at the hotel, who wanted to park in a space needed by a school bus. Among the more prosaic consequences of the commandeered bus stop is that Hawthorne’s fleet of buses block not only Barclay Street, but also the right lane of Broadway, where they stretch as far north as Park Place.
“This is not merely annoying,” adds Gail Nachimson, the executive director of the Hawthorne Foundation (parent organization of the Hawthorne School). “It is dangerous. Our special-needs students are entitled to curb-to-curb transportation under federal law. If they have to walk between parked cars and into the street, they are at risk.”
“For months,” she recalls, “we tried placing notes on these cars, to make the drivers aware that, even without realizing it, they were jeopardizing the safety of disabled children. But these were just ignored.”
“Just because police and other City workers can get away with parking there, doesn’t make it right,” Ms. Nachimson continues. “There is a difference between what you can get away with and what is ethical. And these placard holders should make the ethical decision, because of the impact that their actions are having on disabled kids. I sincerely hope it doesn’t take a tragedy to get this resolved.”
“I am a hands-on principal,” Dr. Glading says. “If you walk by the corner of Broadway and Barclay, you will see me there each morning and afternoon. I will not have one of my students getting hit by a car.” He adds that he has despaired of help from the police department or from Traffic Enforcement Agents (who, although not police officers themselves, work for the NYPD and are subordinate to it).
Ms. Nachimson notes that the First Precinct community liaison staff have tried to be helpful, but “we are told that cars with these placards cannot ever be ticketed or towed,” she says. “We are now asking the DOT to consider designating this stretch of Barclay Street a ‘school bus only’ zone, because my staff have been told that this would make it possible to ticket vehicles with placards.”
“We are trying to be good neighbors,” she says, “but we need these agencies to be good neighbors, too. It is always necessary to adhere to higher standards when dealing with children, especially with disabled children.”