What ever happened to taking the bus to school?

[ncmickeyluvr]

In our school, you are not allowed to walk to and from school unless you live within sight distance of the school.....seriously. There are exactly 6 kids that walk and the guidance counsellor escourts them out of school and across the cross walk every day. She'll even stand there until she sees them go into their houses. I don't think I would allow my children to walk anyway. They would have to cross busy train tracks that don't have a signal....not worth the risk to me.

Anyway, I drive my children out of pure laziness I live about a mile and a half from school......and the bus drives by my house at 7:05. If I drive my children we don't have to leave until 7:30.....I drive them in my jammies and I get 25 extra minutes of sleep. Math is good.

I could let them ride the bus home but the bus wouldn't drop them off until almost 3:00. They're home by 2:30 if I get them. DD has dance at 4 twice a week, so I like to give her that extra time to relax and get some homework done.

 

[Mermaid02]

I read on here all the time about problems people run into taking their kids to school or picking them up. problems withe the pickup line, problems dropping off at school, etc. So my question is this: Why doesn't your child take the bus? I recall briefly when I was a freshman in high school, our district lost it's budget and had to operate on an austerity budget so anyone living within 3 miles of the school lost bus service (that would be me!)...so my best friend and I got driven in the morning and WALKED home three miles after school. Then as a senior in HS I had a problem with my back that made sitting excruciating, so my mom drove me the 5 minutes to school rather than endure 30 minutes on the bus. I still had to take the bus home though.

Outside of those extenuating circumstances (like being bullied, or missing the bus, or a medical issue) why do so many kids get driven to school? My mom would have laughed right at me if I had asked to be driven everyday.

There is no bus service here in our city... you walk or are driven.

 

[RangerPooh]

Oh at the school where I teach there are no neighborhood sidewalks so kids are not allowed to walk or ride their bikes. You are required to either be dropped off/picked up by your parent/daycare... or school bus. At DD school my mom usually walks her too and from, unless it's terrible weather out then they drive. But like as PP mentioned we aren't ready for her to take the school bus. She's 5 and I don't care to expose her to 5th grade conversation.

 

[englishteacha]

I teach in a ruralish school. While lots of kids ride the bus, I'm so shocked by the number of kids who are driven! Our school isn't really "on the way" to anything, so parents must be making a detour to drop off their kids.

I rode the bus all the way up through high school. School was too far to walk, so when I had an after school event someone came to get me, thank goodness. I had a 45 minute ride home every day on the bus. (Agony when you get motion sick!) I even rode the bus as a senior. I didn't have my own car, and was only allowed to drive when my parents wouldn't need the second car.

 

[rie'smom]

We drove our daughter to school because the bus came so early. Then in the afternoons we picked her up because she had extracurricular activities that usually started w/in a half hour of the end of the school day.

 

[golfgal]

Hey...a fellow Minnesotan! Yes, you are right. They built our H.S. away from residential areas, near busy Hwy 36 and Cty Rd 5, so walking isn't a very safe option for most kids. Another problem is the stupid half lockers they have at the H.S.which will not fit a winter coat, boots, backpack and books. You really need appropriate winter gear to walk in our winters. I am thankful our district offers bus service!

I grew up there so I know the town well. It used to be that if you lived in town you didn't get a bus ride to the high school when it was the old high school. When they build that school there just wasn't any other place to put it. I the old high school was built to support a second story and add on around the existing level but by the time they needed it they would have had to put so much into bringing the old high school up to current code that it was more economical to build new.

Ask some of the older teachers about the pranks kids used to play at homecoming. My cousins class managed to get a VW Bug on the roof of the old high school

 

[kafitty]

i always had to take the bus, save for a brief period in 7th grade. i also was always expected to walk to and from my bus stop, which is actually pretty far from my house. Sometimes it would just be easier to walk to the next development over, and take the bus from there, instead!

i've noticed that i almost NEVER see kids just waiting by themselves anymore - they're always in a car with their parents. Gee, i wish. MA winters in a skirt (Catholic school) is not a fond memory.

But my kids don't ride the bus because I don't want them exposed to what the older kids spout out on a regular basis. And, I know that they are exposed at school, but on the bus there is a huge mix of ages, with absolutely no supervision. I know the bus driver is supposed to be in charge, but no bus driver can safely drive the bus and control the behavior of 60 kids from age 5 to 18.

this is exactly what it was like on my Catholic school bus...and ohhh my there are some stories i could tell.

 

[ajk912]

In our school, you are not allowed to walk to and from school unless you live within sight distance of the school.....seriously. There are exactly 6 kids that walk and the guidance counsellor escourts them out of school and across the cross walk every day. She'll even stand there until she sees them go into their houses. I don't think I would allow my children to walk anyway. They would have to cross busy train tracks that don't have a signal....not worth the risk to me.

Anyway, I drive my children out of pure laziness I live about a mile and a half from school......and the bus drives by my house at 7:05. If I drive my children we don't have to leave until 7:30.....I drive them in my jammies and I get 25 extra minutes of sleep. Math is good.

I could let them ride the bus home but the bus wouldn't drop them off until almost 3:00. They're home by 2:30 if I get them. DD has dance at 4 twice a week, so I like to give her that extra time to relax and get some homework done.

Yup, on a good day when we don't have anything going on after school my kids will have one of their homework subjects done before the bus kids are dropped off.

Or, it just gives me a head start on the way to physical therapy on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

On another note..and I have talked about it on this board before, I know. But I live about 1/4 mile from the elementary school TOPS. If we walk through the woods (there is a path, we use it a lot when taking my son to football practice) the school is about 300 FEET away. They don't allow walkers, period. A kid either rides the bus home or the parent has to sign them out. It seems odd that even my 5th grader isn't allowed by the school to walk 1/4 mile. Their solution to not allowing walkers is to have bus service for everyone. Even if you live in the subdivision across the street, you will get on a bus in the bus loop and wait 15 minutes for the other kids to load up and then the bus leaves, and the bus drives out of the parking lot and drops you off at the mouth of the subdvision.

 

[MichelleVW]

My girls have done both. In North Carolina they rode the bus to high school, in North Dakota they either rode the bus or the oldest drove, but that's when gas was crazy expensive so she took the bus a lot to save her gas. In Texas the bus service sucks so last year my oldest would drive them to school, and now my youngest has her own car to get herself to school.

Just depends on where you live on what is the easiest way to get your kids to and from school.

When we lived on the Air Force base in ND they even had activity buses that would bring the kids back to the base after the after school activities which was awesome!! They had the regular after school bus, the 4:00 bus, the 5:00 bus and the 6:30 bus home....it was great.

 

[Robinrs]

My son's school is on the way to my job so I drive him there and drive him back. I never took the bus growing up, it's never been a typical thing to me.

 

[monkeybug]

We walk! Our school is a "green" school, and they encourage walking. Even have a walk to school day each year with little events and certificates for kids who walked. It used to take us 15 minutes each way, but now we live closer and it takes like 2. I wouldn't let my daughter walk herself. I like being there to talk to the other moms and teachers. Plus most of us walkers let the kids play on the playground for an hour or so after school each day, so I feel like it strengthens friendships with other kids in the neighborhood.

 

[KirstenB]

We live in the country, both kids ride the bus. I'm surprised at how many parents pick up/drop off, but to each their own.

 

[MIGrandma]

I rode the bus from 5th grade until I graduated high school, DH did as well.

Our two kids rode the bus.

DH's sister will not allow her DD to ride the bus. I could sort of understand it when she was in Kindergarten but she is now 11 years old and is still being taken to and picked up from school every day. And it's not like we live in a big city where a lot of bad things happen in the schools and on the bus. We are a small farm community, most of the kids come from farm families, and rural living families. Nothing bad happens so I don't understand why she doesn't allow her to ride the bus. She drives 12 miles round trip twice daily. That adds up in a lot of wasted gas, especially back when it was $4/gallon.

The other day we were talking about how her DD will be taking driver's training in 4 years and her mother said she has a lot of growing up to do before then. I bit my tongue but I wanted to ask her if she is going to LET her DD grow up. I will really be surprised if she even allows her to take driver's training class.

 

[Chelley00]

Our school does not have a bus service, so we have to drop them off/pick them up. Lots of parents carpool though, so it really cuts down on the traffic issues. Next year I get to drive 3 kids to 3 different schools. That'll be fun!


I never rode a bus. We live 3/4 mile from school and the busses didn't pick up unless you lived over a mile away. It was 10 blocks to the nearest bus stop in the opposite direction of school, so it was much easier, and quicker just to walk. Sometimes a parent would take pity on us and drive us if the weather was crappy, but most of the time there was a group of 20 of us walking to school. It's actually one of my best memories from junior high and high school

 

[laughinplace199]

My kids go to a private school, for which there is no bus service. The school is 5 miles away from our home, so the only option is driving them.

 

[Ephany]

DD's school is actually on my way to school, so she gets to sleep until 7:15am if I drive her vs. walking as we're too close for bus service. Also there is NO sidewalks in our community. If she were to walk, she'd be walking in the road that's barely wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass and where people drive waaaay too fast. There are speedbumps every block and people still come down the road at 50 even though it's a 25mph zone. She'd also have to cross a major road with no crosswalk or lights at the end of our subdivision. That section of road is between two curves, so visibility is rather bad and people drive way too fast there also.

I walked from kindergarten to my senior year of HS, so I'm not anti-walking even though my mom thought it was good for me and only drove when the weather was really, really bad. I just wished we lived in an area which was designed so it was safe for kids to actually walk.

 

[mickeyboat]

My kids rode the bus both ways, and loved it, until they were in 3rd grade. The bus route changed and meant they would be on the bus for over an hour each morning, and would ride with middle and high schoolers. That was not an option for us, so we started driving them.

They were the first stop on the way to their grandfather's house until January, when they switched to the after school program, so they don't have to ride the bus at all anymore.

When they get to middle school, they will have to ride at least one way.

 

[marcyinPA]

In our district, you don't get a bus pass unless you live more than one mile away from the elementary schools and middle schools, or more than 2 miles from the high schools.

In our case, my fifth grader walks (we live just a few blocks from our elementary school, which is, in fact, an "all walking, no busing" school. On the weeks that he has safety patrol, I drop him off on my way into work, because it's early and nobody is really out walking yet. And he usually walks home from school with his friends, except for Wed., because he has his percussion kit, which weighs about 20 lbs!

We live just under 2 miles from our high school, so in the mornings, we carpool with a neighbor for our DS's (14). When they have early morning band practice, they need to be there at 7 am. They'd have to leave at 6:30 am if they walked! No way!! I pick my DS up every day...it's kind of a long walk through the city to get home. I only work until noon, so I'm able to do it. He can catch the city bus, for a cost, but we haven't needed to go there yet. I'm not opposed to it if the need arises.

 

[barkley]

my kids are in 6th and 8th grade. up until fall of '08 they had never rode on a school bus. reason was they attended private schools that did'nt offer them.

now, they were both still attending private school up until this year (dd now goes to public) but the summer of '08 i learned of a law in our state wherein if the public school bus for the district your kid is assigned passes your kid's private school and it's safe for them to stop and do drop off/pick up within their established schedual-a kid can ride for a 'reasonable fee'. i contacted the district and found i was not only the only parent who had asked about it for that district but one of the only people in the state.

i arranged for my kids to use the service, and ds still uses it (since dd attends that district's public school we no longer pay a fee for her).

the public school district we're in is VERY rural. no sidewalks at all, and all 3 schools (e,middle,hs) are located on the same peice of property in the middle of nowhere). if anyone's parents drive them it would have to be for personal reasons of their own-it's no on anyone's way to anywere (middle of wheat fields). we live over 19 miles from it but due to the existing roads, the minimum travel time is 30 minutes-and if there's snow, ice or fog you're looking at close to an hour.

we only drive ds when his private school's schedual is'nt meshing with public, and dd when she has something too cumbersome to take on the bus (like the wonking big tri-fold science display she had to take a few weeks ago).

we used to live in a traditional neighborhood in california with an elementary school a few blocks away-there were constant public mailings and articles in the newspaper with the school and local law enforcement pleading with parents to behave during drop off/pick up. it got so bad with cars clogging the surrounding streets and parents (without permission) using people's driveways (to avoid the lines-they would pull in and walk their kids the last half block) it had resulted in physical altercations (homeowners cars blocked into their garages by unknown vehicals) that local law enforcement had to come in daily to supervise (the district and the city were working on some kind of action plan when we moved).

 

[powellrj]

My kids always rode the bus until this year. They closed schools and changed the routes so now DD who is 13 would be walking 2 blocks from home and waiting on an unlit corner at 6:40 in the morning. In the spring and fall its not bad, but I don't want her waiting outside in the dark alone.

If she were to walk, she would be crossing 2 state highways to get home. She has walked home in the spring and fall with friends in the afternoon, but there is no way I am letting her cross the highway in the dark alone.