Children walking because of No Bus Service

If you live within a certain distance to a school, the bus will not take your children to and from school, regardless of their age.  I have a major problem with this! You may have heard about the little seven year old girl called Summer, who was wlking home with her twin brother and sister. She ran ahead of them and the next thing we knw the body turned up in a land fill in Georgia. WE SHOULD BE OUTRAGED! Mom of course was at work and I am sure the guilt alone is eating her alive, but in all actuality, we pay taxes to cover our Bus Services. We should be demanding that there be NO child left behind!  This child and many others are put at risk every day!  And as far as anyone doing harm to a child! Hang em naked and skin em alive.  I am not feeling very godly right now, as you can tell!  I am stoked. What say you!  We all need to be contacting our local school districts and demanding this be changed and not settle for anything less.

[alikat1205]

I don't count on the bus.  I make sure my child is supervised.  End of story.  I re-arrange and fanagle and hire sitters and do whatever it takes and my 7 year old is not in that situation.  No the responsibility of the school, but of the parents.  In other words, no I am not willing to pay even more taxes to provide care that parents should be providing. Yes, I work.  

[alikat1205]

That said, of course, I still have compassion for the family.  But I don't find it acceptable even for a working mom to let her 7 year old walk home without adult supervision.  That was a poor choice.

[turkee23]

yes it is crazy that the bus wont pick you up if you live near the school..... u would think that would be easier cause you can just get them closer tot he school.... i agree with both here, they should deff be picking the kids up no matter how far or close they live and yes the parents should be waiting at the bus stop to drop off or pick up their child

[suzi-q]

I am a teacher in a district where the children are bussed to different schools because of segregation issues...Many times parents cannot send their child to the school "right across the street" because of not being the right ethnicity.  However, if the OTHER school that the child is forced to go to is within 1 1/2 miles, the child has to walk...I would not want my child walking 1 1/2 miles alone, no matter what the age!  Many times these are low income families without cars so parents are forced to walk this distance to bring and pick their child up from school.  If you are not able to go to your neighborhood school, buses should be provided.  Next, we do pay taxes, and instead of all the corruption and DPW workers who get paid an 8 hour day for working 4, we could use all that extra money for the children...It should always be CHILDREN FIRST.

[MJIthewriter]

We had this problem with a couple of our schools. I just know I had to take the city bus to my high school and my dad had to drive my sister when she went.

[MJIthewriter]

That is really sad. I hope that system changed. Sounds very sick and corrupt.

[suzi-q]

You are very correct MJ....these poor children, they have to be bussed sometimes 1 hour when there is a school across the street....and THEN if it isn't 1 1/2 miles away you have to WALK!  This was a federal order handed down by a judge...at first all kids were bussed who were more than a 1/2 mile, but when the federal funds slowed down and the government wasn't watching as closely they increased it to 1.5....and believe me, this city is VERY HILLY...not flat at all.

Mind you...the Sanitation workers make over 50 thousand dollars a year...they start at 6 a.m. and are usually home by 10 in the morning.  I am a usually a union person, but when they get so corrupt and are "in" with the mayor, this is what happens....also many of our police officers made over 150,000 to over 200,000 last year with overtime....meanwhile, half of them went "home" on their overtime shifts......VERY VERY SHADY, CORRUPT CITY and not getting better anytime soon....one of the reasons I don't live there anymore.

[jo929]

My kids had to walk 2 miles to school or pay to ride the bus i managed somehow to come up with the busfare, but it was not easy, sometimes they chose to buy a pop and walk instead, that was their chice but things were different then, and i agree something should be done all of us are not rich thank goodness mine are grown, but i feel for the others and some just cant come up with bus fare  i also agree with hang them naked and skin em alive nowdays criminals get a slap on the hands if this were the good ole days they would hang the next day and left a week, then their would be less crime i need to sentence some of them for about a month i sure would clean out some jails  jo

[turkee23]

i dont wanna get political ortoo off topic BUT it just drives me CRAZY that they dont put more money into education and teachers salaries!!!!.....BUT they pay the football players, baseball players, basket ball players etc MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of dollars!!!... for what ?? i can throw a ball too!!!!.... i think its the BIGGEST CROCK that teachers dont get paid JACK!!!... instead of paying the athletes all that money give to the teachers that are actuallly TEACHING these athletes to become whatever it is that they want to be......

it just annoys the hell out me!

[MJIthewriter]

That is so, so sick! God, I hope something changes and they get cracked down on....but leave it up to them, I guess they'd probably take the cut in funding rather than change their system, so sad ands disgusting!

OT: school funding. There was quite a big deal last year about schools closing down. In fact I think it may have been up to a vote by people to choose which schools to keep. Sad.

[megochick101]

I think it is horrible, but then when I was in school I had to walk too. I lived about 20 minutes from school(walking, don't know how much it was in miles) and i walked to school when i was 10-14 years old. Sure i was older, but I still don't think it was right. The school should provide bus services to all students regardless if they live 500 feet from the school or 15 miles from the school.

And I just have to defend my mother and say that not EVERYONE has sitters or can take the time to walk their children to school or drive their children to school. It's just not possible for some parents. My mom was a single mother with two children who worked 2 jobs just to be able to take care of us. Sure she was able to find a sitter for us after school was out, but to find one that could take us to school when most babysitters were actually in school themselves? Not very easy to find someone like that. And frankly my mom could barely afford the after school babysitter we had, and having a babysitter was the only option, as there wasn't family around who could help. She worked 15 hour days every day(6am to 9pm), probably only had 4 or 5 hours a sleep at night, if that, so NO she couldn't walk us to school or drive us. She had to be out the door before we even had to be up for school. So an old lady who lived next door would come over in the mornigns and help us get ready(i guess mom was lucky to have her), and she wasn't physically able to walk us to school. So me and my sister would walk 5 blocks by ourselves and then meet my friend and walk the rest of the rest of the way. My sister always had to go to school an hour early because there was no one else besides me to walk her there and her school was sort of on the way to mine(had to walk a few blocks out of the way, but what can you do?) So she'd get to school an hour before she had to be there, adn tehn after school i would have to wait for an hour for her to get out of class so that we could walk home together. And yes it wasn't the safest, but it was the only option for our family.

My mom and a couple other parents even tried talking to the school and city government numerous times about having the bus pick up children who were closer to the school but everytime it got shot down. You know why? Because other parents didn't want to pay the extra $2.00 for school funding in order for our buses to pick us up. So i guess i should say thanks to all the "compassionate" parents out there like you who refused to pay an extra two bucks to look out for the welfare of ALL the children in the system and instead only focused on the welfare of their own.

So thanks to all the parents who lived in my city and decided that paying an extra two dollars so that all the kids got to ride a bus to school was completely unnacceptable and jsut down right crazy. Believe me, I completely agree, why would you care about other kids making it to school safetly, as long as YOUR child is fine! I personally really enjoyed walking in the dark to school in the morning, and i really enjoyed staying an extra hour so that my sister had someone to walk her home, and I'm sure that my sister really enjoyed having to go to school an hour early, and I'm sure my mom just LOVED worrying everyday about us getting to and from school safetly. Thank you, we appreciated your concern!!

Sorry I'm honest, blunt and sarcastic, but jsut needed to give you all a perspective from a family that had no other choice than to walk to school

[alikat1205]

I'm sorry you felt personally offended.  Of course, I would like all children safe and protected, but I do feel that is the parents responsibility, not the government or the rest of the taxpayers.  No one helped pay for the care of my children but me.  And no I do not feel it is my responsibility as a taxpayer to pay for everyone else.  

[teko]

Well, I come from a generation that insisted my children be picked up at the end of the driveway. The school wanted them to walk up a main street as well, instead of coming down the loop to get them.  I said no. Why should I put my children at risk to keep the bus driver from going around the loop. Not happening.  They continued to pick them up at the end of the driveway.  
And, I am so sorry but, if my taxes are taken out of mypaycheck to support the school and the transportation for your child to ride the bus, then you better believe mine better be on there also, I dont care how close to school we live.  That is the way it used to be, and if the money were being allocated into the most needed areas, that is how it would still be. That child could have been my child, your child, and her mom had to work.  AND, she was with an older sister, however, if they all had been on the darn bus, it would have never happened.  

[April2]

That little 7 year old girl was not walking alone. She was with her older sister and friends and had argued with the kids and when her older sister told her to stop she stormed ahead of them. You can't blame the kids in this situation. I'm not sure you can blame anybody except the perv who took her. Unfortunately sometimes bad things happen. Of course, back in my day we walked to school. We didn't even think about being stolen. We also rode our bikes all over the neighborhood. Did that make our parents bad parents? No. Does it mean times are worse now than it was back then or is it just more known now? I'm not sure. I do believe things are worse, though, and so we do have to be extra careful with our kids. It's a shame because I feel like they learn a lot about responsibility, etc. by being allowed to walk to school.

Or you could have a case like what happened at my son's school. A little girl walked right out the door of the school and nobody ever even missed her. Through a huge lack of misunderstanding she walked right out the front door and walked all the way home. Fortunately, nothing happened to her and she did live near the school and knew her way home but this was a 6 year old child. So yes, when we drop our kids off at school we do expect the teachers and administration to take care of them while they are there. We as parents are responsible but so are those we entrusted to take care of our kids.

[alikat1205]

I do not blame the parents.  But I don't find the situation a call to arms about paying for more bus service, when parents should be taking care of their children.  It may be a call to action regarding sentencing of sex offenders in general, there are far far too many of these stories altogether.  Harsher and longer penalties would assure these people do not get the opportunity to repeat offend.  

[jo929]

well said turkee also teko and all of the rest i agree but i do not agree with withAlikat, but then i guess she has a right to her opinion, not that i agree  when it comes to kids i have a soft heart, and tho my kids are grown i would gladly help paythe taxes or whatever children things like should be on everyones mind, also i agree teachers should get a raise, they have a hard job  jo

[peggy64]

If they charged extra taxes for school busing, it would just get allocated to something else. School bus situation is not the problem here. The problem is sin. If this person had a pure heart this never would have happened.

Then along comes some bleeding heart and says do away with the death penalty, and lets let sex perverts out after 5-10 years(mainly because we have no where to keep them.) I say, the ones that don't want the death penalty might change their mind if it were there little baby boy or girl murdered in such a heinous way. But no, we will  put him in jail, feed, clothe him, and in some facilities they have computer labs, and game rooms, better than they had it at home. I don't have a game room or a computer room.

Statistics don't lie, murder was a lot less prevalent when the death penalty was in force and it did not take 25-30 years to accomplish.  

I'm with the mother, they will find him. I just wish they would do like teko said, and on national television. Bleeding hearts don't have to watch.

[jo929]

I am with you on that peggy, i do not beleive they know how much a child suffered or a person while they were being killed or raped jo

[suzi-q]

Believe me, school buses are not so expensive to make or break a city or town....it is all the "favors", useless "jobs" for friends, city cars with gas for "hot shot" city employees to drive around in, and also live an hour away.....can you see the gas money, now???)

Get rid of all these things and you can pay the measley dollars to pay for safety for the children....cities need to prioritize.....and pockets being lined is more important to them than the safety of our children.

true story....as a teacher I was sent a DRUNK bus driver for a class trip...he got "drunk" while waiting for my class at the Bronx zoo....he reeked when we got back to the bus...needless to say, we sent him on his way, called the school and had another bus driver come get us......

No one cares who DRIVES the kids either...they get measley pay so it is hard to get responsible caring and reliable people to do it......IT NEVER ENDS....

[alikat1205]

If y'all want to pay more taxes, then I suppose the majority wins! I disagree, but not a big deal in the long run.  This thread wasn't really about that anyway, huh?  It has been fun reading, because it is really fascinating to see what everyone takes away from the story.  Bus service was not something I picked out of the tragedy, but y'all did, and that is really interesting.  However, just to play the other side of things (really,just talking out loud, this is just thinking, not to offend so just listen!), but maybe bus service isn't the answer to the question?  Maybe, although in my mind this child should not have been without adult supervision at all, under any circumstance, maybe if the streets were safe it wouldn't even be a story?  What if she rode the bus, and still had to wak from the end of her street to her home?  The bus wouldn't help.  The predator is right there.  In this situation the predator had to be very close by.  How far could she have gotten from the other children anyway?  What if each state instead made harsher and far longer sentences for child sex offenders, even on the first offense?  Maybe if along that route, parents took turns watching children, so that there would be some adult even if walking were an issue.  There are lots of other ideas other than bus service, at least in my mind, and not all of them costly.  I just find it interesting that  so many think this story revolves around the bus or lack thereof.  Maybe it does.  

[peggy64]

I do not think it revolves around a bus, It revolves around an innocent child that was more than likely tortured in some form before being murdered.

It is about the loss of a precious life.

But it goes to show that we are not a safe society in case anyone had any doubts. We are not a society that can let our children walk to the corner store, or even around the corner to a friends house without adult supervision. It is a society that values criminals rights more than victims. It is a society that does not call evil, evil anymore. And if you do call something evil, you are being judgemental. Therefore, few will stand up to evil anymore because God forbid,  we don't want to offend anyone.

Sad thing is, this is just the beginning.

It goes back to what I said in my previous post: sin. We need to get back to calling it what it is.

[alikat1205]

yes, peggy i agree with you.