Not an option. The 2-mile “no-ride” zone is a statewide thing, and AFAIK it’s been that way for some time. It was certainly in place when I was riding the school bus 10 (!) years ago.
Well, I don’t recommend that one. It didn’t work for them kittens, that one time.
No way to moderate/spread out the force from the explosive, and compressed air just broke their little bones.
Ummm, the government programs that shouldn’t exist, because you shouldn’t be forced to pay for them. But you want your money’s worth?
Uhhh, I hope that school thing works out a whole lot better for you kid than it seems to have with you. That is nothing but my fondest wishes for a future generation. Nothing to do with your status as an unproductive leech.
*"Hey, isn’t it ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs?’ That’s in the Constitution, ain’t it? *
No, sorry, that’s from a system designed to breed needy incompetents, you’d fit right in…
Plenty cheap vodka, at any rate.
Better stop here, I’ve got kittens to dispatch. :rolleyes:
You should have though about this stuff before you had a kid. Your convenience is no longer the primary issue. You live in a society, and living in a society involves rights and responsibilities. Having children is a right, but it comes with a pretty heavy load of responsibilities.
As others have mentioned there are plenty of very serviceable alternatives to using a car. I grew up walking, taking a bike, taking public transport and carpooling to school. Yeah, I did this even when it was hot (which, FWIW, it’s not usually hot at 8 in the morning. Today in your town it was 73 at 8:00, hardly heatstroke weather) I have no god-given right to be comfortable all of the time. Life is hard sometimes, and sometimes you have to do shit you don’t like. And that goes triple when you have kids.
I think one reason why you are catching so much flack is that you want it all. You want the government to leave you alone. But then you also want them to give your kids a ride to school. And you refuse to take even basic steps to make your situation better, much less participate in some concrete way of making change.
Sometimes I think we are a nation of pussies. “OMG I can’t walk a mile!!!” My students in Cameroon often walked 6 miles or more from their villages to go to school. And it really was 100+ degrees there at 7 in the morning.
I so don’t understand this OP.
How does your hypothetical-person-who-doesn’t have a car (which is apparently not you anyway) get anywhere ELSE that’s two miles from their house? I mean, I’m going to assume that most people do occasionally go places and some of them must be at least a mile or so away from home (the shops, the library, friends houses)
Whatever that transportation method is - USE THAT! Problem solved! Oh, and Johnny LA’s point bears repeating as well. If there are busses picking up kids up to 2 miles from the school, then it’s unlikely anyone’s more than a mile from EITHER the school OR a bus stop. Pick one. A mile’s walk for a five-year-old is sucky, but do-able - easy-peasy in a couple of years.
Isn’t this the same as you complaining about your wife being cited for the headlights on her car not working? (Or her turn signal, or something like that?)
Dude, exercise or not, suck it up.
Certainly not. I would participate in the school board, but parents are universally like the posters in this thread. They are ready to accept crappy service at an enormous price because that’s “just the way it is” and I need to “suck it up” and “deal with it”.
How bad are the public schools? I don’t need data or studies. All I need to point out is that people who have the financial means, or some that don’t, pay extra money to send their kids to a private school.
What else could display the woeful inadequacies of a public school? Imagine a car mechanic who promised to fix your car for free, but there were still thousands of people paying money to have their cars fixed elsewhere. What would that say about the car mechanic?
As a teacher, let me assure you that the biggest determiner of the success of the school is not the staff, but the students. That horrible public school you can think of would be utterly transformed if it suddenly had students from “the other side of town”.
And not just the students but the parents of those students. We could afford private school for all 3 of ours, but chose the public system. Why? Because it’s a freaking good school system. Because we believe in supporting the community we live in. Because their friends attend there and they also get to meet kids who don’t look/talk/act like them–you know, that whole real world thing. It’s a freaking good school system because of the dedicated parents and others in the community who care about their schools.
I can only imagine your response to an ER visit. Gosh, in retail, all the customers are equal and are waited on as first come first serve–that doesn’t work in health care-or should we make your heart attack wait because the unexplained fever and rash got there first?
In retail, you’re told “we don’t carry that here. Try Macy’s or Dillard’s or whatever.” How does that work for the kid who just doesn’t get it? That kid may be your daughter.
I am so sick of the business model being applied to health care and education. How do you hold teachers accountable for the unteachable (which every teacher of any amount of experience will tell you exist)? What about the sodding parents who would rather bitch about a well established distance boundary to school than help the school staff and their own child succeed in school?
You cannot run school or hospitals like theme parks or hotels or restaurants. It doesn’t work. Instead of whining about that, why not work to better the situation? Get involved in your daughter’s school. How about investing in her education, instead of seeing the people who work at the school as obstacles or enemies? There is no “them” here–there is only your kid and her future.
If you live less than 2 miles from the school, I assure you that your daughter can walk that far without loss of limb or health, even in the Florida heat and humidity. Kindergartners before her and after have done and will do the same. Get over it.
That he was a friend of yours?
Congratulations. You’ve joined the group of parents who are the reason teachers end up buying school supplies out of their own pockets to make up for what parents like you decide they shouldn’t have to supply.
Oh man, why didn’t I see this before, then I could have been Dickhead #1.
In no particular order: (and speaking probably pretty generally as I am more familiar with Illinois law about school busing)
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That 2-mile boundary (1.5 here) probably represents the state law that doesn’t say your school district CAN"T bus kids living closer, only that the state won’t reimburse the district for their buses. I don’t know what percentage of the kids in your district ride -v- don’t ride (notice I didn’t say walk), but that could make a pretty big difference in your district’s budget. Conservatively it costs about $45K/year to put a bus on the street. Someone, probably many someones are going to be at the board meeting wondering why the board is spending money they won’t be reimbursed for to bus kids that live closer to the school when that money could go towards things that parents consider more important in schools. Minor things like books, computers, etc…
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Upon Googling, I see Florida has a vague law about the 2-mile thing, but I can’t find any reference to reimbursement. But there is something about declaring and getting state approval for designated hazardous areas to allow busing within that distance, so, maybe it’s there.
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As several here have said: suck it up. They aren’t saying you have to drive your kid. They’re saying that because of where you live that they won’t. That’s YOUR child, you get her to soccer, swimming, or whatever else on your own somehow, but to school? The nerve of someone making it your responsibility to get her there!!!
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You haven’t paid for a public school. An elementary school costs about $7 million to plant and probably close to another million a year to operate. You pay taxes which support the school. The school that is forced to accept each and every kid that walks in the door. The kids, that if they didn’t get an education would be a much larger drain on society than the cost of educating them (probably close to $8000 - $9000 a year depending on where you live). Without an education they’d probably turn out to be the kind of adult that has no understanding of local or state government and complains that they have to buy a car.
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A couple people here mentioned getting your daughter to a bus stop that’s outside the 2 mile limit if that’s closer. Try that, someone may bitch that she’s not entitled to ride but if you can sneak her on, go for it. Just don’t try it here - my drivers check, tell the principal and we talk to the parents. Then again, some places let parents do that for some kind of a fee. Yes, the fee is fair. You’re putting your daughter on a bus she doesn’t legally qualify for. Some would call that theft of services. Some would just call it setting a shitty example as a parent that says if you don’t like the rules, then cheat to get your way.
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I work for a school district. You pay taxes. Hey guess what? So do I! I do not work for you. If you walk into my office and demand my attention right then and there and pull that “you work for me” crap, you’ll get a decidedly direct answer from me, and a strongly worded suggestion that if you need to discuss something related to your child’s transportation, or that you don’t like the bus stop in front of your house, or you think the bus stop should be in front of your house because where it is now ( 3 houses down) you can’t see your little precious from your front window - that you give me a call, or even better, we decide on a better time for you to drop in. My boss and I once did a little exercise where we factored in the number of taxpayers, total local property taxes, the district budget, our average workweek (conservatively 50 hours) and our own salaries (ok, he did it, I just helped, it was pretty complex and we did it on a napkin at a bar). If I remember right, what it came down to was that any individual taxpayer “pays for” about 17 seconds a year of my time. Just long enough for me to tell you that every other kid in the district living less than 1.5 miles (2 in your case) manages to find a way to get their kids to school without whining, so please don’t let the door hit you on the way out. (yes, I am more professional than that, but inside my head that’s how it sounds)
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By the way Billfish, your idea is perfect. We’ll call them ‘bus stops’, ok?
There. I’m done.
ETA: Thanks Trouble, I forgot that part. Teachers get hammered like that all the time and it sucks. One of the things we say around here a lot is how nice school could be if it weren’t for all the parents. Or some of them.
Yeah…I dont do quantum mechanics in my head while sitting on the crapper…but I do think I have both experienced and understand the concept of bus stops…
You show me an “average” bus route where the distance BETWEEN bus stops is four miles, so no poor student has to walk more than 2 miles (like the ones that are cursed with the “good fortune” of having to live within the nominal 2 miles of the school) and I will be amazed.
Note, my experience/cultural knowledge base is mid-sized towns in Florida for reference purposes.
Blll
Point taken. Even here in the tundras of Illinois, I have some routes where the stops are even 4-5 miles apart. Without exception they’re rural routes and the stops are in farmer’s driveways.
Just for reference, the same measure is in use in England, from aged 4-almost-5 through to 8, becoming three miles above that. The exception is where there’s no ‘safe walking route’, and this is where the local controversies tend to emerge, because the council designating a route as safe or unsafe is the same one which pays for the transport :smack:
Note to parents: just because you might be exhausted after walking two miles, it doesn’t mean it’s worn out the kids.
You mean kids outside the 2 mile bus limit may have to walk even further!? But they are the fortunate ones in this ‘exercise’ on how to avoid exercise. Who knew that they had their own problems to deal with.
Farmers’ driveways can be over 2 miles long here, is that true there as well? Just in case the one child who gets dropped off ‘outside their home’ is perceived to be at an advantage.
jtgain; The school vs mechanic model is invalid as one is a business and a public school is not a business (is there an echo here) - a better analogy is taking the public road instead of the toll road and complaining that the public road isn’t as convenient - it should run closer to the places you want to go. There are an awful lot of roads in Florida, do you use all of them? Should your tax be reduced if you sell your car? Should all the roads run only to the places you want to go? Should they abandon sidewalk maintenance since you won’t walk?
A *private *school *is *a business. If you require your child to be picked up, this will be added to your school fees. If your child requires extra help, the cost will be added to your school fees. They will do nothing for your child if it impacts their profit margin. To the point of refusing to educate your child if she does not fit their business model.
A public school does not have that option - they have limited resources and must make the best use of those funds as possible. If that doesn’t work for an individual parent, the parent has choices. The school does not.
Not a great metaphor. Some of the world’s cleanest water flows out of our taps for free, and yet millions choose to spend money on bottled water instead.
No, I didn’t make that too clear. Rural kids get picked up at the end of their driveway. If it’s a particularly long driveway, and if we get permission, and if there is a big enough area to turn the bus around, we’ll go onto their property to get the kids.
2 mile long driveways!?
Eek.
As others said, this is absolutely not true. If your neighbors are driving their kids to school, they may be willing to drive yours as a favor. Or you may need to pay them gas money or reciprocate in some other way.
Some city water tastes like sulfur though. Like public schools, city water can depend a lot on where you live.
Some public schools are fantastic - better than all but the top prep high schools. There is a reason why houses in similar neighborhoods will sell for much more (or much less) depending on their district. In my opinion, however, we usually screw up cause and effect - parents willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars more to buy a home in the right neighborhood tend to (surprise!) have kids who do better in school than parents who go for the cheap house in the neighborhood with a marginal school district. And guess which homeowners pass referendums for more funding? Guess which ones bring all the asked for supplies, plus extra kleenex?
(Some parents even buy their homes based on the bus/walk distance from the elementary school - they know that their district will make a kid living on 32nd street walk, but one on 34th can take the bus - and they buy the house on 34th - or the one over on 20th that is across the street from the school).
We think that school administrators have somehow made their schools better - and teachers and school administrators are definitely one variable. But its a lot easier to get good results when you have parents who have committed to their kids education from the moment they made the decision to purchase in your district.