It's so easy to say, "It's for the kid's safety", and therefore who could possibly argue with the decision. Of course, that's the prevailing tactic of our school board and administration. They toss out feel-good buzz phrases to support their decisions in a manner designed to make people think that to disagree would mean that you don't care about the welfare of our children. It's a great tactic, actually. They are to be lauded for their ingenuity.
Our problems with this whole situation is that this is yet another knee-jerk reaction to solve a problem by throwing money at it instead of holding people accountable for their actions. We were told that it's not a good idea to suspend bus privileges of offending students because "if they're not on the bus, they're not in school". True. But there's a word for that. It's called truancy, and it's a legal issue. The school administration cannot serve as surrogate parents, and the taxpayers cannot--should not--bear the fiscal responsibility of the district administration doing so. Parents have an obligation to get their children to school. And if they're suspended from riding the bus, maybe the parents need to spend some quality time with their children pursuing behavior modification techniques.
Another problem is that the school board talks a good game about setting policy, but then they frequently disregard their own policies....unless of course sticking to their policies serves their purpose. Now we have a policy that simply states that the Administration can hire bus aides as needed. This leaves a lot of unanswered questions:
- Why wasn't some other solution considered such as using volunteers--perhaps senior citizens or at-home parents--- and providing property tax breaks in return?
- Since all bus routes have an assigned driver, and the behavior problems affected only 3 of 28 bus routes, did we consider switching bus drivers? Could it be that there are a few bus drivers that have better sills in the discipline management area?
- Who monitors the decisions that bus aides are needed?
- How will we even know if the bus aides are being effective?
- What if we decide that the problem is temporary? Who will make sure that we stop using bus aides when they are not necessary?
- Is one bus aide enough for a bus of 70 kids? Jim Carrel noted that when traveling with the HS band, there are often 3 or more chaperons per bus. Does this open the door for more than one bus aide per bus?
- How soon will it be that, in the name of safety, a bus aide is placed on all 28 routes (at a cost to the taxpayer of $3,000 per route per trip)
- When will this school board as a whole consider the taxpayer?
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