...be outraged about my kid's bus routes. They have cut five busses from his school alone and doubled the number of stops on his route (while the other half of the stops from the other four busses that were cut were distributed fairly evenly across the other eight routes). Not only that, the stops they added are all the way across town, and -- this is the kicker -- they're going to be picking up the kids who live closest to the school FIRST, driving them all the way to the north end and then back to the school.
We live literally as close to the school as it is possible to live -- there are no other residential neighborhoods between us and the school. (The school is in the middle of a commercial district and adjacent to a mall). It takes us five to seven minutes to drive him. With the new bus schedule, he will be on the bus for well over an hour each way. No problem, we just switch to carpool, right? NO. They ALSO changed the bell schedule for this school by 45 minutes, so his departure time is exactly the same as my daughter's departure time at her (public elementary) school, which is across town, at least 15 minutes away from my son's school (and my house).
I can't be at both schools at the same time, and since my daughter (as a special ed preschool student) has special transportation services, her commute home is only 15-20 minutes by bus. It can easily take fifteen minutes just to get to the front of the carpool line at my son's school, and that's if you're there WELL before the bell rings. (It's a very large school and literally hundreds of children go home through carpool every afternoon.) So if I want to pick up my son so that he doesn't have to ride the bus for over an hour (which would put his arrival time around QUARTER TO FIVE, and would require us to reschedule almost all his after-school therapy sessions), I would run a definite risk of not being there when my daughter's bus arrives.
If they had left the bell schedule alone, I could have picked up my son first, then driven over and picked up my daughter. If they had left the bus routes alone, I could have let them both ride the bus home. But since I can't be in two places at once, I have no idea how I'm going to manage to make sure both my kids are home at a reasonable time after school.
And this doesn't even include the morning bus routes -- we've already decided that I'll be dropping him off in the morning. He would have to get on the bus at 7:40 to arrive at school by 9:00. If he then has to ride the bus home, he'd be out of the house from 7:40am - 4:45pm. My husband, on the other hand, leaves for work at 8 and gets home at 5:15.
I'm outraged. They sprung the bell schedule change on us and now they're springing the bus routes at the last minute. (The changes take effect on Monday.) Fortunately I have about six weeks between the time my son starts back and my daughter's first day in the fall (since he is on year-round and she is on a traditional calendar, which can't be helped until she starts Kindergarten in 2013).
But unfortunately, I can probably yell until I'm blue in the face and nothing will be done. The only other option I can see is to talk to my daughter's teacher about picking her up fifteen minutes early every day so that I can make it to my son's school before the dismissal bell rings. But that's not great, either.
Just one more year, and then -- the good Lord willing & the creek don't rise -- they will be at the same school & on the same year-round schedule. Kids who have older siblings at a "choice" school like my son's are supposed to have priority assignment for that school.
And if the assignment office fucks that up for me, I swear up to heaven and down to hell that I will have somebody's testicles on a silver fuck*ng platter.
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Topic: Today I'm gonna... (Read 1348885 times)