Opening Day

[Rob_Nicastro]

Off to a good start, My youngest joined his brother at MMS and no complaints from the kids. The bus came on time, the teachers were great and teasing him about his two other brothers and he woke up this morning not wanting to stay home from school.

In light of a bunch of uncertainty for this coming school year, Our experience is off to a good start. Kudos to all who make it happen.

[John Gazire]

We had a smooth 1st day so far over here just waiting for the MSN supply list.

One thing that does have me questioning is a busing issue I need to look into.  My son knows 2 other boys in MSN that both live in Glen Ardens and they are both on different buses. Do we really have a least 3 different buses serving Glen Ardens for 1 school?
 
and also Happy Birthday Rob.

[Pat Garaffa]

"My son knows 2 other boys in MSN that both live in Glen Ardens and they are both on different buses. Do we really have a least 3 different buses serving Glen Arden for 1 school?"

This shoudl fall under the "Why are my taxes so high" catagory.

As long as we insist on providing door-to-door bus service this will continue.  And worse, the kids are never ready and only venture outside the home when the bus arrives at the curb.  This causes long delays as each kid adds another 30 seconds to the trip.  And instead of forcing the kids to be ready, or limiting the number of stops, we continue to add busses and we tolerate this nonsense.

When I was a kid (how often have you heard that?) we had a high school bus but none of the door-to-door limo service we see today.  We walked about 3 or 4 short blocks and a dozen or more of us piled on the bus at once.  The bus only drove down the main roads and never went up and down each side street in an effort to save some kid a few steps.  This kept the stops to a minimum which meant less busses and much faster rides to school.   And no one was fat!

But we don't do that anymore and eventually every kid will have his own personal bus.  And then we'll try to save some money so we'll do a car instead.  And maybe the driver will go into the house to tie the kids shoes and make his lunch too.   When do we get smart? 

[John Gazire]

I'm not sure of the whole story just what I'm getting from a 12 year old. I could see maybe needing 2 depending on how they break the routes but one boy lives a block behind us and is on a different bus stop from my son and another is about 5 blocks in front and is on a supposed 3rd bus. Sounds odd to me. I was just trying to see who he was sitting next to on the bus.

[Jody_Branin]

My kid's bus was late because the first one broke down.  Great start!  Woot!   

[Pat Garaffa]

John,

Glen Arden is 90% cul-de-sacs.  Does the bus go up and down each cul-de-sac or do the kids walk out to Glen Arden Drive?   Think about the speed of the route if 1 or 2 buses blew through there each morning and only did the loop on Glen Arden Drive instead of the door to door service?  

And why do they continue to do this?  Is it the fear factor?  Or the parent’s needs to get junior ready while simultaneously getting ready themselves?  

I see one middle school kid who stands on our bus stop every day with his overprotective helicopter mom.  She combs his hair, zips his coat and adjusts his clothing while this poor  kid waits for the bus.  I actually feel bad for him and I hope she stops that when the high school bus picks him up in a year or 2.  Otherwise, he will spend a good part of his 4 years inside of a locker.  She should stay home and have another cup of coffee. Let him comb his own hair.    

There is a bus stop across from my house.  It’s a corner.  The furthest the kids walk is about 4 houses.  The kid who is 5 homes away has another bus stop within 4 houses of his own home.  No kid walks more than 1 minute or about 300 or 400 feet.        

More runs up and down each street only slows the routes and makes it extremely inefficient and a very long ride.  And since we don't want the kids on the bus for an hour,   we send out more buses.  And then the buses arrive half filled.  

Simple question - Why would we send out 4 buses and fill them halfway instead of sending out 2 buses and filling them to capacity?  And then doing it in half the time by avoiding the “up and down the cul-de-sac” game each morning?  

I live in Oak Glen. We only have one cul-de-sac here but it's the same problem with all the side streets.  22 streets total but only 3 main drags.  Every side street in here is within 2 blocks of 1 of the 3 main drags.  And most are less.  I can see Snowdrift Lane from my house and it’s less than a block away.  But we still have our own bus for all 3 schools.  It’s nuts!  

Why not run the buses on the main interior roads only (Princeton, Starlight & Snowdrift) and stop the insanity of the door to door pickups?      

[John Gazire]

Pat the k-8 buses stop the beginning of every few streets on Glen Arden Dr. but they don't go up and down each cul-de-sac.

[Kathy_Baratta]

 
Why not run the buses on the main interior roads only (Princeton, Starlight & Snowdrift) and stop the insanity of the door to door pickups?      

Because the kid might actually have to walk more than a block or two. Have you really looked around at today's kids? All this driving them around, I think, has driven the drive right out of them.    For the most part they appear to be listless, overweight and even with a heart condition I think I could outrun a good number of them.

As we've acknowledged, they can't even seem to walk a fair distance.

The Sex Pistols knew: "...the human race is becoming a disgrace!" And this insight came from a group wherein one of their members stabbed the love of his life to death.       

KB

 

[Al_Miller]

My daughters bus has been horrible this year. First day it was 30 minutes late and she got to school 20 minutes late. Then coming home she missed her stop and asked my 1st grader for directions to my block. The second day the driver missed about 5 stops in my developmentt and my wife drove my daughter and coming home for a 5 minutes drive took the driver 45 minutes to do. I was given excuses of having to pull over because someone wrote on a seat by the driver. However the kids on the bus say she pulled over to take out a map to find her way and even asked a passerby how to get to the main road.

[James_Obrien]

A couple of hicups on the first couple of days seems normal.

If anyone thinks driving a school bus with 20 or 30 of someone elses kids is easy, through in the fact that the route is new to you and no money or time for a practice run, then I suggest you give it a try.

I will never forget the fisrt time I drove a 54 passanger bus full of High School kids, my knuckles where white, my palm where sweaty and I think my heart skipped a couple beats. And the kids sat in their seat and never said a word. Not an easy job.

Give it a week and everyone will be on time coming and going.

Of course you could always walk.

[Pat Garaffa]

Jamie,

I disagree.  We are talking about our kids here and the most precious cargo we could ever carry.  Your "hiccups" are not tolerable at all.   A little late is one thing but missed stops or lost kids?  Especially when it comes to small kids?  No way!  We could do much better.  

And if you want to experience "white knuckles" why not try maneuvering 100 men on a nuclear submarine?  Or performing open heart surgery?  Or walking a tightrope?  These things are done successfully every day with even more precision and accuracy than we demand out of our bus drivers.  And if they can do that then we can certainly get a competent driver to a bus stop, fill it with kids and get them to school on time without any hiccups.

Why don't they put the bus drivers on a dry run 1 or 2 times before the school starts?  And if "we can't afford it" then tell they must do it in their cars a few times before the first day of school.   And then test them on it too.   And if they want the job then they have to do this or they can go push carts in the Home Depot parking lot.  

Think about that.......  We don't awaken them each morning or buy their wardrobe, bath them or brush their teeth.  But we require them to arrive to work on-time, clean and fully clothed and prepared to do their job.  Why is this requirement (to know the routes and read a map) any different?  And why would we continue to tolerate anything less?  

Then let them get accustomed to the route with the empty bus before they try to do it with a bus load of screaming kids and chatty parents at every stop.   And if not, then let them do it in their cars.  I know those kids and parents are problems too but it's compounded when the driver is not accustomed to the routes.  That simple obstacle should never prevent them from arriving on time. 

I see them driving on the first day and they are reading from a piece of paper.  Here's a thought - hold the damn drivers accountable to their jobs!  Require them to memorize their routes before they get in the bus.  And maybe they could learn how to read a map too?  

How about safety issues?  Did they miss a stop?  Or speed?  Or continue to roll through stop signs? Or drive off before the kids are seated?  (Answer - YES, this happens all the time.)  

If so - see ya!   Unemployment is high and we have a large pool of workers.  I am confident that we have stupid AND intelligent people willing to fill those seats.  So why do we continue to fill the seats with those who are unable to follow simple instructions?  Or smile and be cheerful?  

Nah - that would make too much sense and it's the exact reason it would never happen here.    

[Pat Garaffa]

I was thinking about the “hiccup“ comment.  Although I am somewhat in agreement that a few mistakes are tolerable in some areas; I firmly believe they are completely intolerable in others.  One mushy apple in a bushel of ripe ones isn’t a problem.  No one gets hurt.  But 1 one rotten bus driver (out of a million good ones) can still do a lot of damage!

I recall the following from an excerpt in a book I own entitled “The Scoutmaster Minute”.  It’s a small handbook filled with riveting and encouraging meeting-closing-dialog in the style of Vince Lombardi.  

From the book:

* * * * *
The Scout Oath starts like this:  On my honor I will do my best ……

We all need to learn to do our best all the time and in everything we do.  Sometimes we think that just doing good enough is enough, and we justify ourselves by saying ”So I miss a couple of problems on the test but I still got a high score.  Isn’t that good enough?”

(Do you want to be the patient of a doctor who didn’t do well in that part of the test?)

If you could have done better, then even 99.9 percent isn’t good enough.  In fact, there are some things where anything short of 100 percent isn’t good enough.  

Consider the following statistics:

Even with a reliability of 99.9 percent we would still have:

1 hour of unsafe drinking water every month.

2000 unsafe airline landings per day – more than 1 per minute.

16,000 lost pieces of mail by the U.S. Postal service every hour.

20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions every year.

500 incorrect surgical operations every week.

50 newborn babies dropped at birth by doctors every day.

22,000 checks deducted from the wrong bank accounts every hour.

32,000 missed heartbeats per person per year.

Would you be willing to risk your life and safety, or the life and safety of others, just because 99.9 percent should be good enough?

* * * *
Great stuff!  

Bottom line – mistakes are tolerable in some areas but I don’t ever find them tolerable when it comes to our kids.  No missed or lost kids, no missed routes and no mistakes or lost anything EVER.  People need to be accountable.  And that includes the drivers as well as those who hired them.  And when it happens – heads should roll.  

And I know we continue to hear the same worn out dialog about finding competent workers, with integrity and accountability, on the salary of a bus driver.  Again, I don’t buy it and integrity can’t be bought.  

Martin Luther King said it best:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

[Thomas Jennings Jr.]

I agree with Pat and I agree with Jamie.

On the one hand, hiccups are going to happen. But what is a hiccup? Running a few minutes behind schedule is a hiccup sure. The bus breaking down is a hiccup that is no fault of the drivers. Making a wrong turn here or there...it happens on the first day or so, as long as no stops are missed, that's a hiccup. Kids writing on a seat...it happens.

The things that I would consider intolerable...asking a first grader for directions? Pulling out a map? Missing stops? Losing children? That's not okay.

As far as the length of time of a bus route, its about forty minutes. I went to howell hs and live near newbury. When I went there, we left the school around 205 and got home around 245. There's a lot of kids and a lot of stops. I don't think that cutting the drop off points would lessen the amount of time if we are putting more kids on the buses. I think it would end up being the same but it could cut down on the number of buses. Would we need crossing guards? Many parents would be outraged at moving the bus stops further from their houses. Similar issues were brought up during the courtesy busing debacle....

Also, the number of kids that can fit on a bus is grossly overstated. The three-seaters are really two seaters (especially nowadays) and the two-seaters are a one. Especially for high school and middle school (and any mid- or larger size elementary kids) If there's 10 rows in a bus, that's an overstatement of 20 kids that really don't fit on a bus. Especially when you factor in bulky book bags, projects, and lunches.

[Pat Garaffa]

Tom,

"The things that I would consider intolerable...asking a first grader for directions? Pulling out a map? Missing stops? Losing children? That's not okay."

I agree.  There are many obstacles that can be corrected and many that can't.  A flat tire or malfunctioning bus is not the fault of the driver.  Neither is the weather and precautions must be made. 

And what about the kids who are always late for the bus and leave the driver idling at the curb?  Or those chatty parents?   (Less stops and more kids at each stop will absolutely minimize this problem.)   But until then - the driver is forced to wait for the late kid and make the rest of his route late too.  Or just stay the course and leave the late kid behind and then suffer the wrath of screaming parents.  I know.  Been there, done that and witnessed most of it.  These are tough decisions and you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.  

I was only refering to the school and bus drivers excuses and eliminating all of them.  As long as one group is doing their jobs 100% then some of the other problems are minimized.  

[James_Obrien]

Pat,

Disagree all you want. The average person is not going to pilot a nuclear sub. or perform open heart surgery. But they are going to drive a school bus. The fact that they are transporting are most precious cargo is my white knuckle point exactly. Until you do it seems like a simple task. The fact that people are willing to write about it on the internet proves that it is not.

Asking the children on the bus, well not that big a deal. Believe it or not half of them are telling the drive which way to go anyway, they know the route they rode it last year. Turns are missed, stops are missed and the stories about how bad it was grow like any game of pass it on. There were no children lost or hurt, no accidents and every one arrived home safe. Some late but that happens every year. By the end of next week this will be old hat.

I agree that the routes should be done on a dry run but who is going to pay? Testing? Again who is going to pay? Drivers are not going to do it in their own cars and the school board has no money to pay them or the fuel cost to do it. Even if the drive did and an accident accrued the law suits would follow and we would have something else to complain about.

How do you imply that collecting shopping carts are somehow degrading in one post and quote MLK in your next?