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Interesting article in the Freep. The Livonia School Board is considering ending busing for high schoolers. Well maybe this will be good for getting suburbanites riding public transit. Oh wait, Livonia elected officials and voters said they had no use for public transit. So much for foresight!
http://freep.com/article/20091209/NE...killing-busing
Lots and lots of carpooling and new auto purchases, I guess. I hear that this is being proposed, or at least mulled, in many other school districts, these days.
nb4 a trainman transit rant
I'd so love for that guy to be banned. lol
Only cockpunchers get banned around here.Quote:
Originally Posted by MichMatters
Maybe its that Livonia hates buses. I don't really like them myself.
I went to Wayne Memorial High School in Wayne from 2003-2007. My freshman year, my sister was a senior and she drove. My mom was always nice enough to drive me to and from school the next two years and I drove myself my senior year. I took the school bus home every once and a while and never thought of the ride as negative.
Hundreds of kids used the bus. I couldn't imagine how all the kids at my school would have gotten home otherwise. WMHS's territory is huge. For those unfamiliar with the area, the range extended to Inkster to the east, Romulus by the dump southward and Van Buren Township like 8 miles west [[although I don't remember anyone who lived that far out).
The Livonia kids would figure out other ways to get around - walk, bike, SMART bus [[oh wait, never mind), get rides with others, but I'm sure they would prefer the school bus if they can't get rides.
My kids went to Livonia Stevenson, and I cannot imagine what the morning and afternnon would be like around school if busing is eleminated. There must be at least one accident a day if front of it. It has very limited parking and the police ticket students who park in the adjoining neighborhoods. If they are all left to find their own way to school, it will be the biggest cluster f--k you have ever seen. I leave for work in the morning at the time they are all arrivng and I avoid going by the school at all costs.
benefit of positive experience which they will carry into adulthood.Quote:
Originally Posted by detroitbred
Ironic that in the suburbs, people are consistently anti-transit but every suburban school district runs a multi-million dollar transit system to ship kids to school and back home each day.
I think this is a wise move to consider in order to reduce the budget shortfall.
I attended Livonia Public Schools and as I recall, very few people ever rode the bus. Most who did were freshman, and of those, it was a convenience for most rather than a necessity. Most seemed to have a friend/sibling/parent that could drop them off or pick them up if needed.
I'm not saying the buses didn't have value. But if there's not enough money to pay for everything, something has to get sacrificed. Better the buses than the books.
I agree with Detroitbred. My kids go to Stevenson [[by bus) and the few times I've driven them to school I have been horrified by the traffic around the school. There are accidents there constantly. I can't imagine what it will be like if busing is eliminated. There will have to be police directing traffic. It will be a nightmare.
Yup, just force every parent to buy their kid a car. Problem solved.Quote:
Originally Posted by artds
Wonder how this will affect those kids who don't have a parent or someone available to drop them off or pick them up? It's not like they could go and catch the public bus system, since Livonia opted out of SMART several years ago......
This is on the table even in supposedly green Ann Arbor. We in SE Michigan have a basket marked Options, and there's a hole in the basket.
Classic illustration why only pathetic, repugnant losers need government help. Government stops giving you a ride to school? Turn to family, friends, ride a bicycle, walk. Can't get to school? [[In Canada I walked a mile-and-a-half, uphill, both ways, in driving sleet and snow, a miserable accident of topography and meteorology, plus, I had to go home for lunch, then come back again). If you can't get to school without government help, your family thinks you suck, you have no friends, and you're too lazy to get off your fat, pimply arse.
Looks like "telecommuting" to school may be the next move. Look out teachers. You may be kissing those contracts good bye in the future.
They're also proposing to reduce physical education classes in K-6. So, now they'll have obesity issues. The good news is, they'll get some exercise in high school when they have to walk!
Classic illustration of why this country is doomed.Quote:
Originally Posted by dharma4313
"This is on the table even in supposedly green Ann Arbor. We in SE Michigan have a basket marked Options, and there's a hole in the basket."
Except Ann Arbor has an actual bus system that runs past the locations where kids need to get.
I agree. This is not surprising. It's part of larger trends in this nation to defund and privatize education, because there is no more money.Quote:
Originally Posted by Funaho
One of the reasons there is no more money is because the nation doesn't manufacture very much any more. When we were a major exporter of goods, we had an educational system that was the envy of the world. Now? Not so much.
That, and a good deal of Ann Arbor is pretty walkable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Novine
It wouldn't be such a big deal if kids were going to school within a mile of their homes. But it seems that we've grown accustomed to building large, centralized, and sprawling school campuses along main highways that resemble prisons more than educational institutions. If the kids could walk to school safely, you wouldn't need the damned buses in the first place.
Guess who teaches classes online, provides online tutoring, and creates most of the materials that homeschoolers use?Quote:
Originally Posted by punky1
Why, it's teachers, professors, and other educators!
So very sorry to disappoint you guys. :)
I agree with you completely. Many of Ann Arbor's schools are within walking distance because they are truly neighborhood schools, a concept that also worked very well in Detroit until my lifetime. Why our nation decided to break the model that worked very well in the first half of the 20th century, I may never understand.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto
Very true. But once work - of any kind - goes online, guess what? It can and will be outsourced - to right-to-work states. Goodbye, union contracts! Hello, long overdue taxpayer savings.Quote:
Originally Posted by English
While I think that's stated in a far more abrasive manner than necessary, I wholeheartedly agree with and endorse the underlying logic. The moral onus of providing for the needs of children lies with their own parents and families - not the taxpayer. If people aren't able to or can't afford to care for their own children, they shouldn't be having them in the first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by dharma4313
The elementary schools in Ann Arbor are pretty walkable, but the middle schools aren't [[the map is a patchwork), and the high schools, except for Pioneer, are built in completely unwalkable places just like in any suburb. The city buses are not a workable solution, either--they don't run frequently enough, or with enough capacity, to serve a large high school.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto
Doesn't the school district also contract the 'Livonia Transit' buses from the City itself? This could run into some major headaches for not just the District, but for the City as well.
The people who support bus service reductions are mostly white supremacists. They want you to vote YES for the SMART Property Tax Renewal next August, so they can siphon off all the money from the state tax on fuel for themselves.
Livonia Transit gets no money from the federal and state governments from fuel taxes and Detroit could soon lose over $70 Million per year in state CTF fuel tax money, if my webpage does not get well known. So, watch your wallets and limited transportation tax dollars and save for a car, just in case your city is next.
Granholm is having a presser at 4 about the school funding cuts. Apparently she'll restore the pro-rata cuts.
If only that were true...hard to provide babysitting service that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by punky1
We usually pay one of the high school kids to baby sit.Quote:
Originally Posted by 9mile&seneca
Quote:
Originally Posted by EMG
LOL! Those damned, socialist public schools, with their fancy and unnecessary taxpayer funding and their damned commie busing systems. If people aren't able, or can't afford, to educate their own children in the confines of their home, they shouldn't be having them in the first place.
Oh, and down with those nasty, socialist freeways and their commie surface road counterparts. If you're two legs, or your privately-owned automobile, can't get your everywhere you need to go, you might as well just lay down and die, you scum.
Oh, yeah, muslim president, birth certificate, buy gold, mouth-breathing, and so forth and so on.
Lj is right about the situation in the Wayne/Westland district about the area. Yet I do see quite a few high schoolers get off the bus from Wayne High. As for the Livonia schools I got caught up in traffic around Franklin HS when I worked in Livonia. I learned not to drive down Joy Rd around that time.
There is no easy fix to alot of problems. You get rid of the buses, Then you will have a problem with tardiness/absenteism.
You are completely wrong about the middle schools. Every one is in a neighborhood and certainly walkable_ I see it every day.Quote:
Originally Posted by texorama
The buses run every twenty min [[AATA) and there are bus stops at or very near every school. But you may have kids/students in the district and have 1st hand experience.
You are right about AATA buses. At certain times students can ride them for free with a student ID.Quote:
Originally Posted by ziggyselbin
The middle schools are in neighborhoods, but their districts sprawl and disconnect across many main roads. When I was growing up there, I took the bus to middle school, because it would have taken upwards of an hour to get there on foot, and across several main roads.
Does anyone know how the Livonia school board voted on this one?
Some districts might fit the 'large, centralized, and sprawling school campuses along main highways' model, but for the most part, Livonia schools [[especially elementary schools) were built to be neighborhood schools. In fact, I walked to my middle school, and probably could have walked to my high school.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto
Many elementary schools have been closed due to reduced enrollment, but even today you can see that they're in the midst of neighborhoods:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/CG...s_104308_7.pdf
[[for those not familiar with Livonia, the area between I-96 and Plymouth Rd. is industrial zoned, hence the reason for no schools).
According to this article the bus lovers got their wish. The school board cut 85 teachers instead.
http://www.hometownlife.com/article/...notices+for+83
Quote:
The Livonia school board Wednesday approved layoff notices for 83 members of the district’s teachers union, the result of mid-year cuts in state funding.
Board President Lynda Scheel said an estimated 20-25 will actually be laid off, effective Jan. 29.
By contract, the board has to give members of the Livonia Education Association facing potential layoff at least 30 days notice so it approves layoff notices for more employees than will actually be laid off and then calls back as many as it can.
...
Hey, look on the bright side: They saved 85 bus driver jobs!
No easy decisions these days...
Oh well! Those Livonian kids might as well carpool with their friends, parents and relatives to get to high school. Or better yet have the parents move to another Livonia neighborhood near their high school so that they can walk to school and home.