On Sat, 14 May 2005 02:41:16 GMT, "Jeff"
wrote:

I think most bus rides are about 15 min. or so. There are some exceptions,
including rides that are longer than an hour.

I don't think the vast majority of bus rides are unacceptable.

http://fred.bloomnet.com/bus.html

In Loudoun, Hope is one of about 100 students with a bus ride
of more than an hour each way, despite the school system's
goal of trying to keep all trips to less than an hour. About 250
students in Prince William County and several dozen in Charles
County ride for more than an hour.

More densely populated counties have more schools, so bus
routes generally are shorter. But some rides are getting longer
there, too. Johnny Forte, a Fairfax County assistant school
superintendent who oversees transportation, said he has
fielded calls from parents who wonder why their children are
on the bus more than 30 minutes even though they live less
than 10 miles from school.

(Here I notice that short trips often take longer than you would
think due to having to go around the canals, so the trip by car
is longer and a trip by school bus with lots of stops is longer
still and this area is pretty densely populated)

************
Obviously, this is more of an issue for rural students and counties
and districts that are not densely populated, but

http://www.acclaim-math.org/docs/htm...l%20Busing.htm

A preliminary picture of the rural school bus ride has been provided
in a recent study by Howley (2001). Based on a five-state survey of
elementary school principals, the researcher discovered that most
rural children experience rides of excessive length. Whereas almost
all such children (85 percent) experience one-way bus rides of more
than 30 minutes, approximately one quarter of them experience
one-way rides of more than 60 minutes.

Not only do long bus rides extend the length of the school day for
many rural children, so too do long wait times at school (i.e., before
the start of and after the conclusion of the instructional day). On
average, the morning wait time for rural students in the responding
schools was an estimated 14 minutes. Their average afternoon
wait time was 13 minutes.

Full report on the effects of such bussing he
http://www.ruraledu.org/docs/howley_bus.htm

Note that most of the students who suffer are minority children
and poor children.



--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits