84 elementary students in one school bus??

[Mskanga]

Has anyone heard of this?
Our bus driver was going nuts yesterday, he had 74 students in the bus, to be honest with you I was quite upset that my dd was one of the kids who was moved and basically had nowhere to sit down.
This morning the bus driver comes and tells me that he had way too many kids in the bus yesterday and that's why he had to move kids around the best he could , and that if he gets that many kids today, he will call for a second bus to help out. He said the maximum capacity according to state regulations , is 84 students per bus.
How can they place 84 students in 56 seats? Some of the younger kids I know they can probably fit three on a seat, but the older ones are bigger kids and with backpacks , winter coats and all that....I don't know what they think.
This is not safe for anyone, I hope they find a solution for this or I will seriously consider taking my kids to school and back myself.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

unfortunately yes.
Our school ran into this problem a couple of years ago and it took massive complaining by the parents to get the school to agree to pay the Bus Company enough funds to add more routes.

From what I remember, Federal regulations say very little about maximum capacity of the bus but do say something about how every child should be fully seated on a seat (not the floor). Some states do have their own regulations. So many bus companies do some kind of funky average child butt width calculation and determine that some bus seats should be able to seat 3 to 4 children. That's how they come up with the high numbers.

At the time I told my children that they were NEVER to agree to sit on the floor or stand in the aisle. Either they got a seat or they simply go to the office and tell them that they refused to ride and call Mom.

 

[Deb & Bill]

When I was a kid, my mom was a bus driver for our school district. We often sat three in a seat going to or from school. That's the occupancy of the bus. Either a 62 passenger or 84 passenger bus. Three to a seat.

 

[suzannews]

We live 18 miles one way to the elementary school. I drove my daughter the first week back and forth until they got the bus situation under control. The first couple of days, there were so many kids on one bus, they were sitting on the floor in the aisle. After many phone calls to the transportation office from myself and other parents, they added more buses. Now its 2 to a seat.

 

[mom2boys]

Doesn't sound safe.
I remember when I was in elementary school we had a huge "blue bird" bus - one of the big ones with the flat front - we sat 3 to a seat AND kids crammed the aisle - there was even a line on the floor that everyone had to stand behind. No one's parents even thought to complain.

 

[Evil Princess]

Three to a seat sounds reasonable, provided they are in the kindergarten to about second grade age. It was always three to a seat at my primary school, and that worked out fine.

Bigger kids are a different story, and no kid should be sitting in an aisle. If kids can sit three to a seat comfortably, by all means do it, but if a kid is half on a seat, that is unreasonable.