(AP) Faced with soaring diesel fuel costs, school districts are forcing students to use the old-fashioned way to get to class: on their own two feet. Many schools are eliminating or reducing bus service because fuel had jumped to $4.50 per gallon, 36 percent more than a year ago, and is busting budgets.
In California, districts are eliminating busing for thousands of students. Districts in Washington state, Idaho and Maryland and elsewhere are consolidating bus stops, canceling field trips and forcing students to walk longer distances to school to control costs. Worried parents in Massachusetts have called WalkBoston, a nonprofit group that promotes walking, asking for help after their communities cut back on busing. Health advocates long have encouraged students to walk, stressing the fitness benefits. But school and transportation officials say they fear that abruptly reducing bus service could lower attendance rates, increase traffic congestion or endanger students if they cannot walk on sidewalks and crosswalks. Parents in Shirley are worried about safety and seeking help from WalkBoston. Mary Day said her two sons will have to cross train tracks on their routes to school. To compound the problem, the town recently got rid of its crossing guards to save money.
As a single, working mother, Day said she can drop her children off at school in the morning but cannot pick them up. Her street runs parallel to train tracks and she fears her 9-year-old and 12-year-old sons will be tempted to take shortcuts by darting across the tracks outside the official crossings. “I remember being a kid,” Day said. “Are you going to walk a half-mile down the street to cross in the appropriate way when you see a clear way right there?”
Her youngest son, Quincee, isn’t thrilled with the idea of walking, especially when the weather gets cold. “I don’t really like it because it takes like 20 minutes to do it,” he said.
This should make you feel better about paying for the rebuilding of Georgia damaged by those evil Russians.
They might have to walk up hill … in the snow … both ways!
What wimps American’s have become.
I rode my bike 5 miles one way to school when it did not rain which was most of the time. I was never healthier.
Oh no! Our kids are going to end up getting back in shape!
This could be a good thing. Those “When I was your age, I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow stories,” that your grandparents always told you were on the verge of extinction. High gas prices could bring them back.
My troubled childhood was in a country where KGB agents could have arrested anyone at their whim and execute by a firing squad right around the corner. However, despite the dangers of bears with balalaikas we walked six days a week (sun/rain/snow) about a mile to and from school. During especially cold winter months we took a shortcut over a frozen river, instead of walking over a bridge half-kilometer away.
Still wonder how I survived…
Reminds me of the lament that parents used rejoinder that they had to walk 42 blocks to school every day
It turns out that is why they seldom went to school on a daily basis
The long walk was why
Wait, no twist to fight kids obesity?
“Her street runs parallel to train tracks and she fears her 9-year-old and 12-year-old sons will be tempted to take shortcuts by darting across the tracks outside the official crossings.”
Are they running trains every 30 seconds or something? I mean, surely a 9 and 12 year old can be taught to cross roads or train tracks all by themselves even if there aren’t cross walks!
Still, its worrying, what is going to be next? Kids washing dishing after dinner? Kids being forced to take the garbage out? Kids having to **gulp** wash their own clothes and clean their own rooms! Pretty soon it will be anarchy!
Oh dear god! Her poor little babies will have to cross train tracks, no doubt stealth bullet trains driven by nazi zombies with a “My train can kick your honor students ass” bumper sticker and wielding uzis.
They’ll be dead in 3 days, tops.
Thats fine in the land of sidewalks. Here it would be 2 miles on back roads that people average 55mph on. No way.
Okay, I’ll pull the “In my day…” trick.
In the mid-80s when I was in high school, our bus had three stops on the final leg to my house (walking to-from school wasn’t feasable; school was 7 miles away. Three stops over a mile and a quarter distance. Two adjoining subdivisions shared one stop, for example, and single houses along the way had kids who walked to the nearest stop, sometimes a couple of hundred yards.
This past May, I got stuck behind the same bus. Twelve separate stops, same distance. Only one new housing development in the lst two decades, so that counts for one extra. The rest? Well, each development got its own stop, natch, even if it was only 50 yards down the road (but on the other side). And each individual house with a student got its own stop, EVEN WHEN NEXT DOOR! The minute thirty it usually took to get home was a ten minute ordeal, with the added bonus of fresh diesel fumes pumping into my a/c intake.
When asked – because I had to – my old principal, who’s still there 21 years after my graduation, said it was because the school wasn’t willing to assume the risk attached to having a student walk along the road to his/her house, even if it was literally next door. This is the same road – two lane blacktop – with the same berm – graded gravel, no sidewalk – that I regularly walked beside while a youngster.
Just saying.
Heaven forbid that people with children in school would be required to pay extra taxes or fees for transportation. Around here the school system has bond referendums on every ballot for improving facilities. Each year the quality of the graduates are a bit lower. When in doubt, throw money at a problem.
In most cases, it is probably going to be bus stop consolidation. Likely that a one to three block walk to the bus stop will become a 1/2 mile to 1 mile walk.
I think this is acceptable in most cases. Most of us who grew up in the 1960’s – 1980’s remember something like this. I certainly do. And, yes, I grew up in an area with a cold snowy winter climate.
I was not allowed to walk to and from school, but I always wanted to, I am sure many kids are the same.
MOST of the busing was Increased when there was a scare that KIDS were being PICKED UP and Molested.
Yes, Many of us OLDER folks had to walk or ride bake 2+ miles when we were younger.
You should also consider that WHEN WE WERE younger.. WE had REAL coats, jackets, and so forth.
It had to snow 6+”(and still snowing) in 4 hours to Close the school. but the Next day(hell or high water) school was open, even if it Snow’d 3feet deep. And we still walked.
Pack them together, in GROUPS and let them watch out for each other..
Awful. Imagine if we had to walk to the gym to get on the treadmill? Things are going down the crapper.
California, at least where I grew up, had no bus services for high school as it was back in the late 90’s. The schools were so overcrowded and no land was available so they toyed with the idea of having morning and evening schedules. I had year round school for elementary and middle school.
SoCal was nutty but I sure miss the beach!
Vlad,
If I’m reading your location while growing up right, the KBG would have been the biggest threat. That ice could have probably supported a tank. 🙂
what do you want to bet that sports teams will still have their precious buses to get to games. Oh, and here’s another gem. Can’t allow parents to carpool for field trips and other event due to liability issues. No buses, no cars, no go.
Sure, I walked to and from school, and home for lunch, regardless of weather (and at 38.67 degrees north, we had some winter weather), and I had to cross a coast-to-coast highway (US 50). Kids who lived in the other direction had to cross the railroad tracks. This was in a small town, and it was considered normal. I only lived about four and a half blocks away, but I knew kids who walked about a mile each way. Only the kids who lived outside of town, on farms, rode buses. But then this was so long ago that a can of coffee was an actual pound of coffee!