So you've got a major political disaster on your hands:

-- You've got families where one 7-year-old girl is allowed to ride the bus, but her 5-year-old sister is inexplicably kicked off and told to get to the same school by herself. And the story seems to be the tip of the iceberg, based on similar tales all across the city, and landing on the front page of the city's dailies.

-- At a time when people should be talking about massive infusions of cash and the latest planned overhaul of the city schools, the front page of the NY Times has a story about how poorly the city has redesigned its school bus routes and quotes people (who I think are right) comparing the situation to the shoddy clean-up work from a 1969 snowstorm that pummeled Mayor Lindsay's reputation in the outer boroughs.

-- Meanwhile, the NY Post is reporting that the guy in charge of the buses at the Department of Education was - get this - on VACATION!!! when the new and improved bus routes were created, and oh yeah, the $12 million cost savings that drove all the changes may not actually turn out to be that much when all is said and done.

-- The Daily News editorial board is using phrases like "numbskull decision" to describe the school system's work with this whole bus fiasco, and demanding that something be done to fix it - now.

How would you handle the situation?

If you're Mayor Michael Bloomberg you blame the parents for ever wanting bus service in the first place. Then you blame them for calling reporters instead of allowing his 311 operators to give the the brush-off so the mayor and his people can keep insisting that they are doing splendid work with this kind of stuff. I can't even remember what story it was in, but Regent Meryl Tisch was right when she was quoted this morning saying that this is the kind of stuff that sometimes makes it difficult to support Bloomberg on these issues.

This isn't the first time. Remember a few years ago when Bloomberg angrily tried to claim there was actually toilet paper in school bathrooms, until his voice was drowned out by all the laughter from parents, teachers and kids who really knew the score? Or when the DOE blamed high school parents who wanted transfers to other schools for choosing to send their kids to such crappy high schools in the first place? Or when the city blamed the long lines of parents enrolling their kids at schools on the parents doing the enrolling?

It takes some serious work to make the NYC bus cartel thugs look like the good guys here, but Mayor Bloomberg somehow managed to do it with ease in this case.

Chancellor Joel Klein correctly issued a statement last night apologizing to parents for the blunders. The chancellor also apologized to parents at a forum earlier in the week. But this thing is now a major disaster. Not just the original bus changes (which will get fixed) but the mayor's subsequent arrogant, patrician and heartless response (which won't.)

Message to people who like the idea of things like weighted student formulas, decentralization, merit pay, improving the tenure process, etc: You have to think hard about whether this is really the crew you want implementing this kind of important stuff. How can we even talk about getting rid of incompetent teachers when the mayor has created a system that so warmly embraces incompetent bureaucrats? Who gets fired here? The good news is that Alvarez and Marsal is probably a savvy enough corporate enterprise that it will refund a few million dollars of their city contract for this as an act of goodwill? Today. They will, right? Remember, we're supposed to be in the era of accountability right now.

UPDATE: Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm is, as we speak, providing a "parent update" on the status of the bus route changes at the Tweed Courthouse. That kind of attention will go a long way toward solving this mess.

UPDATE II: One reader emails wondering whether I am overreacting, noting this may only involve a few hundred students and that this is only about transportation. Yeah, I may be overreacting, but it's not at all just about transportation.