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#1
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School bus rides (was One More Hour in School Would go a Long Way - But the Union Won't Allow It)
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 |
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toto wrote:
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) In Fairfax County, it is lots of stops and the economic necessity to design routes so as to fill every bus to capacity, because of a bus driver shortage (bus driver pay is actually quite high, but the cost of living is higher). The high school regular-ed buses have routes that take 30-60 minutes to drive. The kids at the beginning of the route get picked up an hour before school starts; the ones at the end perhaps only 10-15 minutes. If a kid doesn't take the bus every single day, he is dropped from the route, which might change the route and the schedule; likewise, new kids in midyear can change the routes and schedules, often by as much as a half hour change over the course of a year. When I was a kid, they set the bus routes at the beginning of the year, and ridership, especially at the high school level, was variable with the seasons; the route did not change with ridership changes. Late buses ran every day, traveled the same routes as the regular routes, and sometimes had only 10-12 students. Now late buses run only 2 days a week, have different routes so as to cover the kids of multiple regular routes, and if too many kids show up, they have to wait while they order up an extra bus. (Special ed late buses have to be signed up for at the beginning of the day, or they won't take you.) My son is in a special high school magnet program - a daily 2 hour culinary academy at a different school followed by a travel period to his regular school. Unfortunately, the way things work, kids ride 30-60 minutes on the regular bus to their base school, then board another bus to the magnet school, only 5-6 miles but another half hour ride since this is the peak of rush hour and the bus serves two base high schools; they can't leave until all the buses have arrived at the first base school, so they typically arrive at the magnet class 30-40 minutes into the class. I drive my kid directly to the academy. An hour and a half on the bus to get to a school 6 miles away so as to miss a quarter of the class was simply too much. He does take the bus back to his base school, sometimes missing a few minutes of his next class, but the school conveniently has a 20 minute student-aid period stuck in at that point where kids in grade trouble go to the classes they are having trouble in - my son doesn't get that. lojbab -- lojbab Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group (Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.) Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org |
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In article ,
Bob LeChevalier wrote: The high school regular-ed buses have routes that take 30-60 minutes to drive. The kids at the beginning of the route get picked up an hour before school starts; the ones at the end perhaps only 10-15 minutes. I lived in one school district that had circle routes for all buses: they started and stopped at the school. They went the same direction for the morning and the afternoon, so if you were the first on in the morning, you were also the first OFF in the afternoon -- everyone ended up riding the same amount of time each day. I rather liked it; but I don't think it would work if the school covered a very large geographical area. -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
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dragonlady wrote:
In article , Bob LeChevalier wrote: The high school regular-ed buses have routes that take 30-60 minutes to drive. The kids at the beginning of the route get picked up an hour before school starts; the ones at the end perhaps only 10-15 minutes. I lived in one school district that had circle routes for all buses: they started and stopped at the school. They went the same direction for the morning and the afternoon, so if you were the first on in the morning, you were also the first OFF in the afternoon -- everyone ended up riding the same amount of time each day. The buses did that on the route we lived on in RI - very very rural school district, and was quite spread out. But it IS necessary for there to be a circular route available. Probably would not work well here in MD because of the various peninsular roads which go out along the spine of the peninsula and have to come back the same way. I rather liked it; but I don't think it would work if the school covered a very large geographical area. grandma Rosalie |
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"Bob LeChevalier" wrote in message news toto wrote: 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) In Fairfax County, it is lots of stops and the economic necessity to design routes so as to fill every bus to capacity, because of a bus driver shortage (bus driver pay is actually quite high, but the cost of living is higher). The high school regular-ed buses have routes that take 30-60 minutes to drive. The kids at the beginning of the route get picked up an hour before school starts; the ones at the end perhaps only 10-15 minutes. If a kid doesn't take the bus every single day, he is dropped from the route, which might change the route and the schedule; likewise, new kids in midyear can change the routes and schedules, often by as much as a half hour change over the course of a year. When I was a kid, they set the bus routes at the beginning of the year, and ridership, especially at the high school level, was variable with the seasons; the route did not change with ridership changes. Late buses ran every day, traveled the same routes as the regular routes, and sometimes had only 10-12 students. Now late buses run only 2 days a week, have different routes so as to cover the kids of multiple regular routes, and if too many kids show up, they have to wait while they order up an extra bus. (Special ed late buses have to be signed up for at the beginning of the day, or they won't take you.) My son is in a special high school magnet program - a daily 2 hour culinary academy at a different school followed by a travel period to his regular school. Unfortunately, the way things work, kids ride 30-60 minutes on the regular bus to their base school, then board another bus to the magnet school, only 5-6 miles but another half hour ride since this is the peak of rush hour and the bus serves two base high schools; they can't leave until all the buses have arrived at the first base school, so they typically arrive at the magnet class 30-40 minutes into the class. I drive my kid directly to the academy. An hour and a half on the bus to get to a school 6 miles away so as to miss a quarter of the class was simply too much. He does take the bus back to his base school, sometimes missing a few minutes of his next class, but the school conveniently has a 20 minute student-aid period stuck in at that point where kids in grade trouble go to the classes they are having trouble in - my son doesn't get that. Are metro routes at all usable for school-school travel? ONe of the things I absolutely LOVED when living in Lubbock was that rather than have school busses for non-special needs students, every student who could possibly do so was instead subsidized to use regular public transportation. As a result, coupled with Lubbock's graph paper grid of roads, there were city busses within a few blocks walk to take you almost anywhere you'd want to go in the city, and because both regular public transit users and students used the city busses, you didn't see much bad behavior from kids. The routes which served elementary schools did have adults riding to help make sure the youngest students got off at the right point, but in general, the kids handled it themselves. The end result was that the public transit system there was easily the easiest I've ever dealt with, and it made it much simpler for students who attended classes outside their area, or had specialized programs. One of the schools I worked at had a cooperative program with a high school where some of the students interested in teaching careers came over and helped out for two afternoons a week (a block schedule, where the students were considered to be in a class, plus a different start time for elementary and secondary), and were paid via grant funds to do so. Because of the public transit system, these high school students (who could walk from the high school) could then take a city bus home without problems. And for me, a graduate student, who at the time didn't have a car, the system was a complete godsend, especially once I started doing practicums at schools around the city. lojbab -- lojbab Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group (Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.) Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org |
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"Donna Metler" wrote:
"Bob LeChevalier" wrote in message news toto wrote: 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) In Fairfax County, it is lots of stops and the economic necessity to design routes so as to fill every bus to capacity, because of a bus driver shortage (bus driver pay is actually quite high, but the cost of living is higher). The high school regular-ed buses have routes that take 30-60 minutes to drive. The kids at the beginning of the route get picked up an hour before school starts; the ones at the end perhaps only 10-15 minutes. If a kid doesn't take the bus every single day, he is dropped from the route, which might change the route and the schedule; likewise, new kids in midyear can change the routes and schedules, often by as much as a half hour change over the course of a year. When I was a kid, they set the bus routes at the beginning of the year, and ridership, especially at the high school level, was variable with the seasons; the route did not change with ridership changes. Late buses ran every day, traveled the same routes as the regular routes, and sometimes had only 10-12 students. Now late buses run only 2 days a week, have different routes so as to cover the kids of multiple regular routes, and if too many kids show up, they have to wait while they order up an extra bus. (Special ed late buses have to be signed up for at the beginning of the day, or they won't take you.) My son is in a special high school magnet program - a daily 2 hour culinary academy at a different school followed by a travel period to his regular school. Unfortunately, the way things work, kids ride 30-60 minutes on the regular bus to their base school, then board another bus to the magnet school, only 5-6 miles but another half hour ride since this is the peak of rush hour and the bus serves two base high schools; they can't leave until all the buses have arrived at the first base school, so they typically arrive at the magnet class 30-40 minutes into the class. I drive my kid directly to the academy. An hour and a half on the bus to get to a school 6 miles away so as to miss a quarter of the class was simply too much. He does take the bus back to his base school, sometimes missing a few minutes of his next class, but the school conveniently has a 20 minute student-aid period stuck in at that point where kids in grade trouble go to the classes they are having trouble in - my son doesn't get that. Are metro routes at all usable for school-school travel? ONe of the things I absolutely LOVED when living in Lubbock was that rather than have school busses for non-special needs students, every student who could possibly do so was instead subsidized to use regular public transportation. As a result, coupled with Lubbock's graph paper grid of roads, there were city busses within a few blocks walk to take you almost anywhere you'd want to go in the city, and because both regular public transit users and students used the city busses, you didn't see much bad behavior from kids. The routes which served elementary schools did have adults riding to help make sure the youngest students got off at the right point, but in general, the kids handled it themselves. The end result was that the public transit system there was easily the easiest I've ever dealt with, and it made it much simpler for students who attended classes outside their area, or had specialized programs. One of the schools I worked at had a cooperative program with a high school where some of the students interested in teaching careers came over and helped out for two afternoons a week (a block schedule, where the students were considered to be in a class, plus a different start time for elementary and secondary), and were paid via grant funds to do so. Because of the public transit system, these high school students (who could walk from the high school) could then take a city bus home without problems. And for me, a graduate student, who at the time didn't have a car, the system was a complete godsend, especially once I started doing practicums at schools around the city. When I was in elementary school (in Baltimore City), we had a trolley car that ran down the middle of the main street (Roland Ave) that our school was on. And kids did ride the trolley to school. I didn't because I only lived 3-4 blocks from school and I walked - mostly in the alleys or across the front of a block of stores. They also use the public bus system to transport students in Nassau and Bermuda. grandma Rosalie |
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On Sat, 14 May 2005 17:07:35 -0500, "Donna Metler"
wrote: The end result was that the public transit system there was easily the easiest I've ever dealt with, and it made it much simpler for students who attended classes outside their area, or had specialized programs. One of the schools I worked at had a cooperative program with a high school where some of the students interested in teaching careers came over and helped out for two afternoons a week (a block schedule, where the students were considered to be in a class, plus a different start time for elementary and secondary), and were paid via grant funds to do so. Because of the public transit system, these high school students (who could walk from the high school) could then take a city bus home without problems. And for me, a graduate student, who at the time didn't have a car, the system was a complete godsend, especially once I started doing practicums at schools around the city. Chicago's public transit is subsidized for students as well, but I don't think many children ride the *el* and buses to school before middle school and kids do take school buses - I think many kids in urban areas are bused for safety because they would have to cross very busy urban streets or highways to bet to their schools. In Evanston, some kids were bused for safety across the canal that runs on the Chicago river and some were bused across certain streets as well. -- Dorothy There is no sound, no cry in all the world that can be heard unless someone listens .. The Outer Limits |
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"Donna Metler" wrote:
Are metro routes at all usable for school-school travel? I really doubt it. They built Metro stations in areas needing redevelopment, and the routes are designed to feed people into DC. I know of only 1 high school that is within a few minutes walk from a Metro station. ONe of the things I absolutely LOVED when living in Lubbock was that rather than have school busses for non-special needs students, every student who could possibly do so was instead subsidized to use regular public transportation. As a result, coupled with Lubbock's graph paper grid of roads, there were city busses within a few blocks walk to take you almost anywhere you'd want to go in the city, and because both regular public transit users and students used the city busses, you didn't see much bad behavior from kids. Metro buses have a little better coverage than the trains, but again have been oriented to collect people and take them to the Metro stations, with a few routes that go down the main highways. My son took a Metro bus home sometimes on Fridays when he attended Herndon middle school for a year - it is 15 miles from our home, and he had jazz band practices most Fridays with no late bus. The choice was to call me and wait more than an hour to get home, or take the Metro bus to the Metro train station and then take the train to the station a quarter mile from out house, which took close to the same amount of time, but he was moving rather than sitting and doing nothing. lojbab -- lojbab Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group (Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.) Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org |
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On Sat, 14 May 2005 19:55:03 -0400, Bob LeChevalier
wrote: "Donna Metler" wrote: Are metro routes at all usable for school-school travel? I really doubt it. They built Metro stations in areas needing redevelopment, and the routes are designed to feed people into DC. I know of only 1 high school that is within a few minutes walk from a Metro station. Washington and Lee would certaily qualify off the top of my head, as would a big Epeiscopal high school (the name fails me now) on the Arlington.Fairfax Border near one of the falls church metros Barb |
#10
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"Barbara Bomberger" wrote in message ... On Sat, 14 May 2005 19:55:03 -0400, Bob LeChevalier wrote: "Donna Metler" wrote: Are metro routes at all usable for school-school travel? I really doubt it. They built Metro stations in areas needing redevelopment, and the routes are designed to feed people into DC. I know of only 1 high school that is within a few minutes walk from a Metro station. Washington and Lee would certaily qualify off the top of my head, as would a big Epeiscopal high school (the name fails me now) on the Arlington.Fairfax Border near one of the falls church metros Barb It sounds like Bob was limiting his count to those in Fairfax County. There are several schools within walking distance within the District and MD inside the beltway Jeanne |
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