I don't know when they started the year round stuff here in NC or even how wide spread it is in the state. I have been here in the Raleigh area 14 years so it has lasted at least that long. I've really not heard any form of criticism about them. The schools that have it seem to be filled all the time. It seems to me that it gives families plenty of time for extended vacations about 4 times a year making planning more flexible.
Here the argument against the year round school or 4 day weeks is always child care. I'm always confused by this where I live. Our schools don't have before/after school care, so they are going to day care anyway. I don't know too many people who only work 830-230 M-F, so the kids have to be going somewhere. And in the summer, most of the daycares have summer care for school age kids. So really the only difference would be that the full daycare days would be split up into a couple weeks here and there vs a 10-12 week summer break. It would be a bit of an adjustment, but I think they'd figure it out pretty quickly.
Judging from the gridlock before and after school, a LOT of parents aren't at work at 7:45 to 8 am and 2:30-2:45 pm. It was NEVER like that when I was a kid.
) the schools in california were all strictly asigned/enforced by where you lived (to the extent that when i was in high school there were monitors in my district that went out and personaly confirmed residency if it came into question and expelled students) so you had allot more kids who were within walking distance AND parents who were much more willing to let even the younger grades walk to their neighborhood school. that contributed to fewer cars but a heck of a lot of walkers and bikers.
They went with open enrollment here in 2000. That is when bus service ended. And they have closed many schools due to declining enrollment. So yes, kids here no longer go to an assigned school, or the neighborhood school. The district I live in was laid out on a grid. No elementary school student was more than one mile from their assigned school. No Junior High School student was more than two miles from their assigned school. No High School student was more than 3 miles from their assigned school.when WE (we are in the same age'ish range i believe
i'm aware. it caused a nighmare in the neighborhood we lived in at the time. new construction, many homes which were still being built-all around a brand spanking new elementary school that the owners/soon to be owners were obligated to significant Mello-Roose charges on for (if i remember right) 15 years. before construction was completed on many of the homes the school already had a multi-year wait list due to open enrollment. people lived across the street from a school and had higher mortgages due to Mello-Roose that directly paid for that school but their kids were never able to attend. cars from miles away clogged the small neighborhood streets during drop off and pickup (police had to deal with the fist-fights over people blocking driveways due to parking cars in front of them). this in turn clogged up other neighborhoods b/c people had to shuttle their kids to the other schools.
That is odd.
ours covers 300 square miles with a student population of 430 k-12. like yours there's no sidewalks and no kids live within miles (and biking is too dangerous due to the narrow roads/road speed-that's why they've banned it). my kids had an hour on the bus in the morning and the afternoon too (they went to school in the dark and arrived home after dark in the winters). you can see cows from the bleachers/we see wheat fields.Ours has a much shorter trip in the morning.We are only 7 miles from the school. But they won't allow kids to cross the road to get on the bus. So in the morning, they are one of the last picked up on the way to school. But in the afternoon, even tho they pass our house like 15 mins after school is out, they make them ride the entire route, and let them off on the way back to the school. It irritates me to no end.our's is very much like our district-but yours has allot more students than ours
Yes, different for sure. Although the area I grew up in had no sidewalks, and bike lanes didn't exist, at least in our area. 60+ years later, still no sidewalks, county keeps trying to put them in and homeowners keep saying no. Of course the county would charge the homeowners for the sidewalks. They would like fire hydrants and are willing to pay for those, but the county says no. No water district there, every house has its own domestic water well so putting fire hydrants in would require bringing in a water source.
i get it-our stop was the first pickup on the route in the morning and the last drop off in the afternoon and there were the odd rules on crossing public roads as well. what many of my friends are surprised to hear of is that our district's busses are not segregated by age/grade. all the busess are k-12 and do a drop off first at the elementary then drop off at the high school. my kids never had an issue with it nor did they ever indicate any problems mixing the kids (though i think they had the younger ones sit at the front). made it nice for parents with older and younger kids b/c if they lived close enough to a bus stop they could walk together to/from if the weather permitted OR if there was a ton of snow the parents only had one bus to plan transportation around.
That’s how ours are as well. There’s not enough buses or drivers as it is now. No way they could pull off buses for younger/older kids. I didn’t even know that was a thing anywhere until recently.
Ours are all country roads. No shoulders even to walk pr ride on. It’s the ditch or the driving lane lol. And on hilly curvy roads, it’s not a great idea to walk or ride on them
Ours are all done that way as they start at different times. My elementary son starts at 7:40 and my middle school son starts at 8:20. But we have very few buses here. When I lived in Minneapolis each bus had three routes, an early school, a middle school and a late school. As soon as they got done with the late school, they had to go pick up the kindegartners, then take the early school kids home.
Our schools are on 1 campus. They start within about 15 min of each other. I know in the afternoon they are all out between 3-315. I think our routes are too long for us to do that here. With the district so spread out, it wouldn’t make sense to do multiple trips down the same roads and not enough kids in the right ages to do it differently. Like my kids each have 50-60 kids in the whole grade. So that’s like 1 maybe 1.5 buses of kindergarteners. We have full day kindergarten here so there is no early/late kids. Except for preschool. Our school does have prek 1/2 day. But if your kid is in the morning they ride the bus to school and you have to pick them up. If they are the pm class you bring them and they can ride the bus home. My kids went to daycare and the daycare had a van and would take them to the school and they’d ride the bus back with the rest of the school kids to daycare after school
We used to get calls from the school districts in the foothills in our viewing area asking us to put out alerts about what level of bus service was running during certain weather conditions. Many students in those communities had their primary bus pickup location, and when the roads were icy, they had alternate bus pickup locations. Generally speaking, school buses don't go up hilly roads in icy/snow conditions and the backup bus stops were on main, level roads. However, the threshold for buses not running at all is much lower than the threshold for a Snow Day for the school. So there may be no bus service, but it is a regular school day. And Snow days are much rarer since the pandemic. All students in these districts get school provided laptops, so the school will go to Hybrid remote learning before closing for a Snow Day. Not have power and internet in a wide area of the schools borders is about the only time there is a Snow Day anymore.
I am pretty sure our district does not pay that well lol. And unfortunately, we have so.many.snow.days. We have been out for 3 days for 3 inches of snow lol. I wish I was kidding. The county doesn't get to the gravel roads very quickly, so it will sort of melt during the day if it gets warm enough, or sunny, then refreeze at night, leaving solid ice the next morning. And if we actually get a good amount of snow? It could be a full week. Then when/if they actually get to the gravel roads, the plows take half the gravel with them, so the road gets slushy and the busses get stuck. Happened to my kids bus last winter lol.
