(Published Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013) 
 
 Thousands of parents scrambled for alternate ways to get their children to school and back home Wednesday as the school bus drivers union went on strike amid a dispute over job protections in new contracts. More than 100 bus drivers reported to picket lines in Queens Wednesday morning in the city's first school bus strike in more than three decades. The union behind the strike, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 1181, is protesting a city plan to bid out private bus contracts with no job guarantees for the union's 8,800 drivers and escorts. Discerning when this will end is difficult as no negotiations are scheduled. Joe Marino for New York Daily News 
 
 All students affected by the strike got MetroCards Tuesday to take subways and buses to school, but a plan to make the cards available to parents of young children and special education students has been hobbled by bureaucratic delays. That means she'll have to leave work early to pick her daughter up. "I'm afraid that one of these days I'm going to walk into work and they're going to say, 'You know Angela, enough is enough.'"
– It's a rough day to be a schoolkid in the Big Apple. Some 152,000 of them had to find an alternate way to get to class in the freezing rain this morning, amid a school-bus drivers strike, reports the NY Daily News. Schools issued MetroCards to affected students so they could take public transportation, and parents who opt to pay for a taxi or drive their kids can fill out forms for reimbursement. But some worry that kids with special needs—more than a third of the children affected—will fall through the cracks, and parents of young students won't receive MetroCards allowing them to escort their kids until tomorrow. The strike, the first since the 1970s, could last for days or months, as no negotiations have yet been scheduled between the striking bus driver's union and city officials. The dispute centers around new contracts for certain bus routes that the city plans to bid out in an attempt to cut costs. The union called for a strike, fearing current drivers could wind up jobless when their contracts expire in June, reports NBC 4 New York. Protestors are forming picket lines at bus yards, and at least one driver says she plans to stay there for "as long as it takes." Replacement drivers hired by the bus companies will be ready to take the wheel next week—so long as they're willing to cross the lines.