Have you ever seen a school bus fishtail or slide on icy roads?

[Disney1fan2002]

Not a pretty sight!

I guess our 6 snow days we had last winter were enough to make the school superintendant be more frugal with snow days this year. Granted, we are only suppoed to get 3-4 inches, but it is snowing like a dickens right now, and the roads are super slippery. The kids have school! It is supposed snow all the way into tonight, with the heaviest ending ariound mid-day, so I guess they figure if they can get the kids TO school, coming home won't be too bad.

I am just bummed, because a snow day would of been perfect today. the kids have their cousin visiting from NY for the weekend, he got here last night, and they could of had a day to hang with him, instead he has to hang out by himself (Dh will be home) until my 5YO get's home at 12:30...then the older kids get home at 3:30.

 

[C.Ann]

Seen one? How about being the person driving one??

Years ago I drove a school bus for handicapped children.. That particular year we had one ice storm after another so the districts were running out of snow days and keeping the schools open when they really should have been closed.. Because of the type of children I was transporting, I would travel as much as 60 miles away from here to pick up children and then bring them back here to 3 different schools.. This one morning the roads were nothing but a thick sheet of ice and my first pick-up was in a mountainous area about 30 miles south of here.. The child lived in a log cabin home at the top of a very steep hill.. Well - I started up the hill and the next thing I knew the bus was going backwords, then sliding sideways and headed straight for a ditch.. It was 5:30 in the morning, dark, I was all alone, no two-way radio (which they have since installed on the buses) and scared out of my mind.. Eventually I got the bus to stop - just before it would have tipped over into a ditch - and I literally sat there and cried.. Then I got angry - VERY angry!! I locked up the bus and hoofed it back down the hill to a truck stop where I called my supervisor and told him that not only was there no way I was getting up that hill, but I wasn't even going to TRY - nor would I be continuing the rest of my run.. I told him to send someone to get me AND the bus because I was DONE for the day.. (If I had already picked up that child (or had other students on the bus) I would have been in a real jam because you can NOT leave those kids on the bus alone - nor can you take them OFF the bus to walk with you to get help..) Surprisingly my supervisor told me not to worry about - that he would send someone right away and he would call the school and the parents to advise them that the roads were far too dangerous to transport them that day..

I finished out the school year and then promptly resigned from that position.. Having the lives of those children riding on my shoulders when poor decisions were being made in terms of when it was safe to transport them was far too stressful for me at that point in my life.. For several years after that I worked as an aide on the buses for the severely and profoundly handicapped children (kids on O2; kids in wheelchairs; etc.) and that was much more to my liking because I wasn't the one behind the wheel..

In the beginning of the winter schools are pretty "free" with handing out snow days but as they start to use them up and get close to their limit, they really begin to "push the envelope".. With my own children, I simply relied on my own judgement and if the school didn't like it, I honestly didn't care.. The children's safety should always come first - even if it means losing some state aid for that day...