Your daily Letter to the Columnist — Aug 7, 2012
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He has a problem with school bus changes in Montgomery County
I read your column on the school “dues” and agree. There are many who don’t have the money to pay them.
I am having an issue with Montgomery County Schools concerning bus routes. Beginning this year, buses will no longer run onto many dead end rural roads. Kids in elementary schools will be required to walk up to three tenths of a mile, while middle school and high school kids will have to walk up to a half a mile.
My grand-daughter catches the bus at my house; the road to my house is a dead end road, measured at four tenths of a mile. Next year she will be in middle school, which means she will have to walk to the intersection, four tenths of a mile, to catch the bus at 6:25 a.m.
She will be 10 years old. I have a problem sending a 10 year old girl out that way. The policy was passed to save money. I am more interested in saving our kids from who knows what!
Keep up the good work. We do have some very good school systems around, but they all have some questionable policies we need to correct.
Scotty Bolling
MCCOY
August 7, 2012 - 12:00 PM
Growing up in San Diego, the buses there wouldn’t pick you up if you lived less than a mile from school (if I recall correctly). Since Kingergarten, I walked to school. For a while, my mom walked with me (for a while, I even rode a horse while Mom walked alongside), By about 2nd grade, I was walking on my own and, later, walking with my younger sister. I walked or rode a bike to school pretty much every day of my life until I moved here to Roanoke.
My main safety concern for these kids on Montgomery County is if there are adequate accommodations – i.e., sidewalks – for them to walk safely to the bus stop. If the schools are making them walk along high-traffic streets (though I would gather a dead-end street wouldn’t qualify), that would be a problem.
Further, we do have a growing problem with childhood obesity. A walk of half-mile or mile a day for many kids could do them well, and if their parents joined them for some quality time, even better.
We’ve always had to do this. Parents either drive the kids to school or meet the bus in their car.
Perhaps Scotty could walk with the 10 year old? Get the day started with a tad bit of exercise.
Are there any other kids around she could wait at their stop?
Drive her to that place.
When I was a kid I walked 1/4 mile to a store..
a lot of kids caught the bus there.
I know its different now..
If nothing else if its a half mile and no one else is around
to help out…take the car to the end of the drive and wait
with her?
I understand Mr. Bolling’s concern. I also wonder what his position was on the tax hike that was passed by the BOS a couple of months ago? There have been draconian cuts in the school system that directly affect classroom instruction. The tax increase was not sufficient to prevent these cuts that included the changes in bus routes. There was vocal opposition to ANY increase from many folks in the county. We appear to be getting what we pay for.
Most likely no sidewalks. Still, I walked to middle school and high school a mile each way nearly every day of my school “career.” I did get a ride on extremely rainy days but not because of cold.
I’d be more concerned about the 6:25am pickup time than the walking. Holy Cow!! How long a ride does this child have, and what time does school start?
“back in the day” I had to walk five miles “uphill both ways” to get an education, sometimes thru 3 ft of snow, dodging cars as there was no such thing as a sidewalk (only the trails we trod thru the thickets with our calloused bare feet (go Tarheels)… lol…
A few hundred yards from a bus stop? Really??? lmao
Maybe we should tax the “rich” so that our children can get limo’s from their doorstep to school.
Seems like an appropriate allocation of taxpayer dollars…
sarcasm ended…
Was it uphill both ways gdad? (wink)..just teain’.
I agree with Bolling’s concerns. While it may be true that we all walked to school or rode bikes, etc., the simple fact is, we now live in a different world. When I was a kid you almost never heard of children being kidnapped. The dangers of this society are far more prevalent than were the dangers of our society 30, 40 or 50 years ago.
I understand that the school system had to cut its budget, but if the cuts sacrifice student safety, they will end up costing more than they save.
Mr. Bolling,
The simple solution to your problem is to walk your granddaughter to the bus stop. Responsible governments cut back in hard times. Thank you lucky starts Montgomery Co. isn’t irresponsible like the 0bama administration.
#9 Actually, I carried a baked potato to keep my hands warm in the winter and then I ate it for lunch.
#10 Actually, Chuck, while you might hear more about child “kidnappings,” the vast majority are family related. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, just 115 children in the U.S. were victims of “stereotypical” kidnappings in 2011. It’s really pretty rare, not that that makes it any less horrendous for the families that it happens to.
#7 A Beasley, this is one of the results of consolidating schools to save money (and to offer more kinds of classes). Rural kids have to ride up to an hour each way to get to school.
If it’s about protection, children have been kidnapped and had unspeakable things done to them for years. It didn’t just “get bad” overnight. The instant transmission and mass distribution of media today allows us to see reports of these crimes virtually in real-time. No longer are communities and local law enforcement as able to cover up these incidents to avoid embarrassment, either (Yes, it did and does happen). Encourage the children to travel in groups and they also learn valuable social skills and hierarchy.
No sidewalks? Where I lived, there wasn’t a sidewalk within five miles. That certainly didn’t make my mom tell us we couldn’t walk down the side of the road.
As far as walking is concerned, I walked the half-mile down (and back up) my driveway every school day all the way until ’92.
I know those were hard times back then, though. We had to use dial-up modems to get to the Internet, Wal-Mart didn’t sell groceries, and gas was almost $0.80 per gallon! We only had two TVs in the house and mine wasn’t hooked up to the Primestar dish. But I digress…
Is this really an issue? Children will get a little extra exercise and maybe get to socialize with mixed age groups on the way to the stop.
Or is the real problem because some ludicrously over-protective parents will be inconvenienced by “having” to drive their helmeted, bubble-wrapped little angels to the bus stop each day?
It’s not a travesty; it’s a minor inconvenience in your responsibility to educate your children.
In the interest of fairness, 6:25AM is more than ridiculous; the kids will be on the bus for over half an hour before first light during December. I got on the bus at 7:10 and some days it was still pitch dark when I stepped on it.
#11 Of course suzie assumes that Mr. Bolling CAN walk his granddaughter to the bus stop. If this were my MIL, she would be unable to do so simply because of unexplained leg and back pain that doesn’t allow her to walk that far at once. She could watch after a grandchild in her house but could not make that wlalk.
But of course suzie assumes everything is black or white and that everybody is capable of doing whatever it is that she determines they should be able to do.
“Thank you lucky starts….”
LOL!
gdad,
re: “Actually, I carried a baked potato to keep my hands warm in the winter and then I ate it for lunch.”
now that is funny…
gdad:
“Actually, I carried a baked potato to keep my hands warm in the winter and then I ate it for lunch.”
But by college, you were using it for a pick-up prop.
#19 Dang! I wish I had thought of that in college.
But seriously, one time when I was in my early 30s and was interviewing some high school students for a story, I told them something that made one of them say something like “Gosh, you must be really old.” So, with a completely straight face, I told them the baked potato fable. Their reaction? “Wow! Really?” It was great.
gdad, I know you are not arguing in favor of anything that threatens children and would not impy that you are. However, you might do well to actually read the NCMEC annual report in its entirety instead of just keying in a single bullet point. It is true that there are only 115 “traditional” kidnappings annually. However, what you are citing as a traditional kidnapping is considered “the most serious cases in which the child is abducted by a stranger and killed, held for ransom,
or taken with the intention to keep.” The report also cites that there are approximately “800,000 children are reported missing every year in the
U.S. or 2,000 every day. An estimated 200,000 are abducted by family members; 58,000 by nonfamily members, the primary motive for which is sexual”.
http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/publications/NC171.pdf
Now I don’t know about you, but in addition to keeping my child from being one of the 115 abducted to be held for ransom, killed or kept permanently, I also have a very deep concern about preventing my child from being one of the 58,000 who are abducted by strangers for sexual purposes. That breaks down to about 159 kids PER DAY.
If the changed bus routes make it even one-tenth of one percent easier for sexual predators to victimize kids, and if saving money spent on gas is the only justification, then the savings are simply not worth the price. Has anyone even asked how much money this plan is supposed to save?
Anyone who has ever been in a public school knows there is plenty of money wasted each year. I really do not care what “the statistics” say about crime. Statistics can be manipulated and anyone with even a modicum of common sense knows society is more dangerous today than it was fifty years ago, even if we did walk to school ten miles through the snow up hill both ways carrying a baked potato. IMO the schools can find a better way to save money than requiring young kids to walk a half a mile in the dark to wait for a school bus.
Well said Chuck@21. Personally, I walk my child to the bus stop every
morning and, at the same time, yell at the driver’s speeding up and down
a 25mph residential street at 45-50mph. We need more common sense in government and the general public.
Pretty sure if my MIL was having unexplained leg and back pain, we would take her to a doctor to find out the reason.
#23 Wow, are you a doofus, Malarkey. She’s been to every doctor around and even to U.Va. and they still don’t know the cause. Are you saying you can diagnose her?
MMM’s going to have to disappear from this thread after embarrassing himself horribly once again.
Sorry granddad, I thought UVA had a pretty good hospital up there. My bad…
And yes I can diagnose her, just roll her old bones on down here. You know that’s school policy.
They had high schools in the 1940s?
#25 I knew I could bait MMM into saying something even stupider than his bad medical advice.