Almost 60% of the city’s high school students have decided to start winter break early this year.

Faced with long commutes and no subway or bus service because of the continuing transit strike, many students are opting to stay home. The problem is most extreme at some of the city’s lower-performing schools, including Norman Thomas High School in Midtown, where just 5% of students showed up for class yesterday.

More children braved the cold yesterday than the first day of the strike, with 86% of elementary students and 77% of middle school students showing up for class, about 10% more than the day before.

Parents have been scrambling to find ways to get their children to class for the last several days before schools shutter on Friday for winter break. The high schools have been hit hardest because they typically enroll students from across the city who rely on public transportation.

Mayor Bloomberg pleaded with parents yesterday to get their children to school. The schools chancellor, Joel Klein, said yesterday that there was “no viable option” to provide private bus service for high school students.

Even at the elite Stuyvesant High School, where seniors compete for perfect attendance, just 51% of students made it to Chambers Street building yesterday morning.

Hunkered down in a McDonald’s after school gearing up for his journey home, sophomore Liam Moran said it took him more than two hours to get to Stuyvesant from his home in Staten Island.

During the day, he said normal classes were on hold and they watched two movies – “The Incredibles” and “Robots.” Classes are expected to return to normal today, he said.

Sophomore Jason Zeng walked three hours in the cold from the Upper East Side to Stuyvesant because, he said, “If you’re absent a lot there is something bad on your record and it makes it difficult to get into college.”

Students weren’t the only ones bracing themselves for the cold – many of the city’s 80,000 teachers hopped on bikes, strapped on skates, or hoofed it to school.

Mr. Bloomberg lauded teachers yesterday for keeping the schools running.

“I will say also that the attendance rate of the teachers is spectacular, and teachers really are stepping to the plate and coming to work,” he said in a news conference at City Hall.

A kindergarten teacher at P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, Melissa Irslinger, walked two and a half hours to get to school from her home on the Upper East Side.

After learning her sartorial lesson on the first day of the strike, yesterday Ms. Irslinger shaved 20 minutes off her walking time by trading her professional attire for sneakers and a tracksuit.

“And when I ran out of tissues I would stop in Dunkin’ Donuts for a cup of coffee,” she said. Almost 80% of students at P.S. 8 showed up for school yesterday.

The strike hasn’t been all bad for some students.

With school starting two hours later because of the strike, a ninth grader from Brooklyn who attends the Lab School for Collaborative Studies in Manhattan, Natasha Kirtchuk, said she’s been staying at a friend’s house near school and waking up at 9 a.m.

“The whole school schedule is messed up,” she said. “And I’ve actually been having a lot of fun.”