Chapter Two - The Broken Body of Our Education System - We All Love a Yellow Submarine
Posted on | March 3, 2004 |
In this installment, we’re going to look at a minor injury to the body of Sweetwater County School District Number One that can cause major injuries to everyone else. The transportation system. Even though this is just a minor wound, it warrants attention, because like a real wound, if it is ignored it will fester and lead to other, bigger problems. Let me be fair here, driving a school bus isn’t an easy job. There are traffic rules, safety rules, and scores of kids to deal with every day. Many drivers wake up every morning looking forward to the time they are going to spend that day with the children on their bus. They follow the traffic rules, provide a safe environment for the children, and become a positive part of every student’s day.
Some drivers, though, aren’t so positive, and some aren’t so good at what they do. Just recently my son’s bus driver forgot to drop him off at his stop, adding twenty minutes to his trip. It wasn’t until the driver finished his route that he realized there was still someone on his bus. My daughter’s bus driver forgot to drop her off several times. In fact, just recently, her bus driver refused to drop her off at her stop because her stop, which has been her stop all year, wasn’t on his list. So instead, her bus driver dropped her off at another stop (which he told her he wasn’t supposed to do because she didn’t have a note) so she could get a ride home from a family friend. When my wife called the bus barn the next morning, they said her bus driver “was really worried all day about whether that little girl made it home all right.†Apparently, he just wasn’t worried enough to make sure. It’s nice to know that I can depend on someone to get my kids home.
Over the past few years my children have been forgotten in the morning, forgotten at school, and one time my kindergartner even had to give his bus driver directions to our house. Another driver told my son that if he wasn’t going to ride the bus every day we’d have to call the bus barn because he wasn’t going to stop there if he wasn’t going to be there every day. Guess what buddy? Yes you are.
And be there on time already, won’t you? I’m tired of sitting by the window for twenty minutes every day wondering just what time the bus is going to show up to get my kid today. Now, I have three kids that ride different buses, so you do the math. On a bad day, I can spend nearly an hour watching for the buses to mosey down my street.
Just recently, my son’s bus driver almost rear ended a slow moving commercial vehicle. He thought it was cool that the bus driver slammed on the brakes and avoided a wreck. I think the bus driver should have been paying attention in the first place. These are our children you’re driving around with. You don’t have the luxury of not paying attention. Safety comes first.
And while I’m on the subject of safety, let me speak directly to the drivers. Just because you are in a great big yellow land sub, doesn’t mean you get an automatic right-of-way at every intersection. You don’t get to blast through stop signs without stopping, regardless of whether you’re in a hurry. You don’t get to make your right turn first even when the guy across from you entered the intersection ahead of you. I’m tired of playing chicken with you in the intersection when I drop my kids off at school! There is a system to determine the right-of-way at an intersection and if you don’t remember it, I suggest you stop by the DMV, pick up a pamphlet and refresh your memory. And yes, contrary to popular, or not so popular opinion, you do have to slow down to twenty miles per hour in the school zone, just like the rest of us, and all the other speed limits still apply, too. Just yesterday, a full sized bus flew by me in a 30 MPH zone. I was going 32MPH. When I sped up and paced it I found that it was going just under 45 MPH. Almost 15 MPH over the speed limit. This wasn’t a fluke, it’s happening on our streets every single day.
After a recent storm, I was driving down a residential artery when I saw a bus heading my way on a cross street. What a shock it was when that bus ran the stop sign, pulled out right in front of me, stopped diagonally in the middle of the street and turned on its red flashers. I was inside ten feet from it when my antilock brakes finally pumped me to a stop on the sheet of ice we were all driving on. My son, who was on the bus, thought it was really cool how I slid to a stop behind him. Now, was that really necessary? Instead of following basic traffic rules, and common sense, he put himself, myself, and all of the children on his bus at risk. This kind of behavior is unacceptable.
School buses are often the most visible part of the school system. They are seen on a daily basis by almost everyone in the community, and for the rest of the body to be healed, the bus drivers are going to need to do their job, and do it right. Some courtesy, some law abiding, and some common sense would be like a great antibiotic, and go a long way to healing what ails this system.
In the next installment, I’ll be discussing the tasty, or not so, subject of our school’s food service program.
Wisdom
Table of Contents for The Broken Body of Our Education System
Related posts:
- Chapter One - The Broken Body of Our Education System - What’s Wrong With Sweetwater County School District #1? The public education system in Sweetwater County School District #1 is broken. It may be that the public education...
- Chapter Four - The Broken Body of Our Education System - Teach me, or Teach Me Not The third injury warranting immediate medical attention is the backbone of the education system, the teachers. Now before you...
- Chapter Three - The Broken Body of Our Education System - Hurry Up And Eat A Little Food. It does a body good. If it’s good food. If you get enough of it. If you get...
- Chapter Six - The Broken Body of Our Education System - A Principled Principal is Hard to Find Ah, the principal. Everyone remembers their principal, right? He (or she) is the head of the educational body. He...
- Chapter Five - The Broken Body of Our Education System - Teacher, Teacher, Won’t You Teach Me Without a doubt, teachers are the most visible part of the educational system. Along with being the backbone, they...
Tags: education > safety > sweetwater county > traffic > transportation > wyoming
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