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Editorial: Pitching in
September 8, 2005
Hurricane Bob dealt the Vineyard a mighty blow in August, 1991. If you lived on a dirt road, well off the state or town roads, there were probably trees crumpled across the road blocking the way. There may have been a tree or two leaning on the house or poking a branch through the sidewall. At home, there was no electricity for two weeks. We got a generator going to run, alternately, the water pump, the lights, or the microwave. Wife and young children left for the mainland to stay with family. Everywhere, there were stranded boats, broken trees, roofs stripped of shingles, windows clouded with pitch-sticky, wind-driven, salty film of bits of leaves and sticks.
Bad as it was, it was nothing like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Bob was a mess, Katrina was a rampaging killer.
There was this similarity though: After Bob, Islanders turned up the heat of their daily generosity to clear roads, mend roofs, feed and care for neighbors without power, and shelter the few of us whose shelter had been damaged beyond quick patching. Fire, police, Red Cross, emergency management volunteers all pitched in to help where it was needed. And today, in the aftermath of Katrina, Islanders are doing the same, this time directing their prodigious instincts for giving and then giving more in the direction of the Gulf Coast.
Elsewhere in the newspaper this morning, we tell a few stories of Islanders pursuing their instinctual drive to help neighbors, even those whom we don't know, those who live half a continent away. And we detail the ongoing efforts, utterly disproportionate to the size of this community, but perfectly in proportion to the good-hearted Vineyard spirit.
School buses
The school system, faced with a last-minute crisis when the selected school bus operator walked away from the contract he'd been awarded, will operate the buses for the next six weeks, serving the up-Island region, the high school and the Tisbury and Oak Bluffs elementary schools. It was a reasonable stop-gap under the circumstances, especially considering the obscure nature of the competitive struggle between MV Coachlines, the winning bidder who could not fulfill the contract, and Island Transport, the bidder with the longest track record of service to the school system but in this case the losing bidder. Sorting all this out will take some time. In considering how to go forward, whether by awarding the contract to Island Transport, re-bidding the work, or continuing to operate the bus service itself, the school system's leadership has a difficult analytical task ahead. Fortunately, because Edgartown has continued to operate its own school buses, there is some history concerning cost and safety issues that should inform the larger system's inquiry. Operating buses and managing drivers and other workers who will become part of the school's payroll does not, on the face of it, seem to be the business of an education system, but maybe Edgartown's experience will show that it can be cost effective and safe without increasing the school system's liability.
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