I know everybody is dunking on the families here that refuse to let their kids take the bus, but are we seeing more districts that don’t even have that option? My kids walk to school, but there wouldn’t be a bus for them to take even if they wanted. It’s not a thing here.
I'm not sure if the situation is the same there, but one of our local school districts has a rule that if you live within a mile of the school building you attend, bus pickup isn't available. Otherwise, they are allowed to ride the bus.
Or, even if buses are available, at what times? Would the kids have to get up before dawn and, if lucky, get home by dinner? They're children. 12 hour days shouldn't be a thing.
This. Plus some days after school, they have extracurriculars. Mine are under scheduled compared to their peers but still - there are no regular (city) buses for them to take to and fro those activities.
The school bus picked me up 15-20 Mins before school and dropped me off 15-20 mins after school ended ?
When was this? There is a shortage of drivers throughout the country. So you have fewer buses running. This impacts the schedule. What our situation may have been decades ago is not at all relevant to the situation today.
Yeah, they’ve had instances of disabled kids being stuck on busses for hours here It’s not good!
Huh. Wow. Why do your buses take that long to get kids home? What extremes are the distances? We have kids 60+km from our school catching buses and they still only take an hour or less travel time in morning & evening. Most school bus rides are less than half an hour.
Sure, but if school starts at 7:00 (which it does in many cases), they may be required to get on the bus at 6:00 am. Which means they get up at what time? No child should be getting up at 5:30 am for school. We have a shortage of drivers.
Wow that's early! Aussie schools run 9-3:30, but some city schools are starting to run as early as 8:30 or even 8:15, as their catchment is only a few km wide. For part of the year sunrise is 7ish, I cannot imagine doing an hour of dark classroom prep, and then roll call before sunup. Incredible.
It's terrible. Our high schools start at 7:05 am. It's not healthy for them.
Can't be healthy for the teachers either. When the hell they end school? Lunchtime? Parents can't find that much fun, schools that close at 3 annoy parents because tgeir kids get home before they fo as it is... Don't you lot start having eight hours of daylight and stuff in winter?
High school starts at 7:00, ends at 2:00. It's absurd. We have our shortest days in December. Just under 10 hours of daylight on the winter solstice (Dec 21).
Our district only buses students with special needs. Everybody else is on their own.
My wife taught 7th grade & she’ll never let our kids ride the bus. We are not shelter our kids people. We could send them to private school. They pay drivers near minimum wage & it’s a disaster. The busses smell like vape, but the district won’t pay for monitors. It’s a free for all.
Our system has a rule about living under a minimum distance from the school and not being able to ride the bus, so we'd be in that same situation. The school's also down a two-lane road with no sidewalk and heavy traffic, so they can't walk, either.
We had a bus driver shortage a few years ago where I’m at in Georgia and my older kids were averaging 1:45mins on the bus to get home. It’s better now and my younger kids are car riders since my wife works for their school thankfully. The hack is to pick them up late, not early 😏
My kids didn’t have the option to ride a bus to school. In elementary school we carpooled, I middle school they walked. Now that they’ve both graduated, buses are available to elementary students only, and only if they live a certain distance from the school.
My elementary and middle school didn’t have a bus route for my area, so I didn’t even ride the bus until high school I lived 4 blocks from my elementary school and about 8-9 from middle school For reference, small midwest town of ~60K
My wife and I both teach in our home district and our daughter will never ride the bus. Also I sponsor a large school activity and when we have events it’s a crapshoot as to whether the buses will actually show up or not. It’s all unsustainable.
Also this. One kid has to high tail it across campus to catch the bus. If he misses it. The next one should come 30 mins later. But it often does not show up. We live very far from the school so he can’t walk. One solution is carpooling with other parents as much as possible.
Why is the bus company allowed to do this? If a bus didn't run a school route, there would be public outcry.
It’s largely due to a lack of drivers or sheer incompetence by the dispatchers of the bus company. But there’s no solution to fix the problem. You can’t replace these people because there’s no one else.
Due to duty of care, teachers supervise bus areas, even with high school kids. Due to duty of care, we don't just leave the remaining students if the bus doesn't come. We ring bus companies, ring parents, and later would ring MPs and the like. Seems so foreign that American schools aren't like that.
Additionally, some school districts own their own fleet of buses and employee their own drivers. Others rely on a contract with a 3rd party company to provide transportation. It has been my experience that districts that own their own buses have better results.
Oh in the moment we do all of those things. I didn’t mean to imply that we didn’t. But we’re pretty hopeless for any long term fix. Bus drivers here are hourly, basically part time employees. Many have multiple jobs so they are paid during school breaks.
Guess it's another symptom of US organisational breakdown, like their school shootings, homelessness & the like. The inability of their kids to autonomously make it to school & back. Here, bus companies drive many routes that aren't school-related, & they get a living wage, so it's different.
These issues got exponentially worse after Covid. And I have little confidence it gets better. We just don’t pay people a living wage for the most crucial jobs in society.
You’re 100% right. This country does a garbage job of taking care of its citizens. And the current people in charge are intentionally making it worse. School bus companies where I live in the Midwest are only transporting students. It may be different in large cities like NYC, DC, CHI, LA etc.