Editorials
Do not pass Go
Jan 17, 2008 11:57 AM
Some teachers get up well before dawn so they can get to school an hour or two before it opens. This is not just extraordinary dedication to their jobs; usually they can’t even get into the building that early. They do it because it’s the only way they can be sure to find one of the few parking spaces near the school. And that’s even with a Department of Education parking permit.
Without such a permit educators would often be forced to park blocks and blocks from their school. That may mean walking alone through some rough neighborhoods. That’s not exactly an effective way to persuade teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools.
Yes, public transportation is the best way to travel around the city and we firmly support it. But many schools are not convenient to mass transportation and teachers often travel long distances or routes that make public transportation completely impractical. Some teachers travel from school to school during the day on a tight schedule and that, too, often makes using public transportation out of the question. For all these teachers, parking permits are not a perk, they are a necessity.
Mayor Bloomberg rightfully wants to crack down on city employees who use parking permits in abusive and dangerous ways. No one should block fire hydrants or park in bus stops or clog traffic by double parking and DOE parking permits do not allow any of that. Nor do they allow holders to ignore parking meters or no-parking zones or alternate-side-of-the-street regulations — as do Department of Transportation parking permits that are issued to some city employees.
In the mayor’s zeal to eliminate parking abuses he mistook the permits educators have with landing on “Free Parking.” That’s not what those permits are by any stretch of the imagination. They are an important ingredient in creating working conditions that will keep and attract top teachers to the city.
We strongly urge the mayor to withdraw the ill-considered plan to reduce teachers’ parking permits — at all, let alone by 20 percent.
