Let's get real. This is an obvious pattern: New York City mayors don't announce snow school closures 'til the last possible minute; Bill de Blasio did it again with a closure that went announced only at 5:00.
De Blasio has shown himself to be same as de Blasio: wait til last minute to tell people that there's no school.
Look at all the factors that make outer boro folks get up and out EARLY:
*Long Island Expressway ENTIRELY closed east to the Queens/Nassau boundary, until 8 AM.
*Rail and MTA on a Saturday schedule.
*This non-Manhattan location: 14 degrees F, feels like -4 degrees. Overnight the windchill put the temperature 10 degrees colder with 30 mph winds.
*News folks telling people to stay in, unless you are an emergency worker.
*Newark, Hoboken and Jersey City, just over the river, announced their closures hours earlier
So, why the general move to not close, or to hold off to last possible minute? Why is Gov. Cuomo's travel ban/state of emergency non-applicable in NYC?
Here's the conspiratorial view: employers don't want too many parents to be absent, tending their little ones. Ergo, they put the heat on the mayors: don't close NYC schools unless the roads and transit commutes are REALLY horrendous. BTW, if the school system really cared about kids and parents it would put an immediate moratorium on the Common Core test prep madness.
So the coy wait-til-last-minute game goes on. Us non-Manhattan folks had to wake up extra early to get ready for extra 45 minutes added to the commute, and BDB in his decisiveness waits until 5:00 AM to break the word. Great. And the UFT bigs, with their cushy, don't-show-up-to-boro-offices-til-10:00 jobs don't understand what preparations regular working Janes and Joes have to take. They won't speak up; they don't don't know what the real commuting, working conditions are.
For those expecting real change with this administration, this was not a good omen.
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