253
Shortage of bus drivers solved by a fleet of regular drivers. Lol. I'm at a lose for words at how badly managed the US is.
We really will sacrifice a thousand children before letting a single CEO get a papercut.
I hope they don't just use Uber or Lyft. Otherwise we might see a sudden explosion of new driver accounts who happen to be online at 7 a.m. on school days only.
Oh you bet this is what will happen. I've been seeing schools with a car drive line purposely built for people to snake their cars around before dropping off a kid. Massive amount of asphalt and suspension destroying speed tables/bumps and incredulously slow. So kids need to wake up much earlier to just even enter the school instead of the incredibly faster school bus. Why is this becoming more preferable? Well people are dumb and rather not buy fancier school buses that help the community and rather go into massive amounts of debt to not help "freeloaders" and feel not poor from the status symbol a car seemingly has for some good forsaken reason...
Now they are just going to get an Uber or Lyft ride to not deal with the unbearable time it takes to drop off a kid. Used to be only rich kids doing "skipping the bus" , now it's everyone, and now no one is "rich" . Just like that meme from the Incredibles movie, where syndrome said a similar phrase.
Oh well that's gonna be perfectly safe yep
America should really fix their public transport already.
Where I'm from, kids just take the regular bus, not a school specific one, because why should a school have their own bus system, when there's buses driving around anyways?
America should really fix their public transport already.
Say what's in it for the private corporations that ran it into the ground and America will listen. Won't you people stop for one second and think of the shareholders?!
Out here in the ranch lands school buses are an absolute. Kids have to be up before dawn to get loaded up for a 5-10 mile trip one way. Parents could do it but they would have to drop the kids at the schools a couple hours before they open in order for those parents to make it to work on time
But why should the bus be the school's responsibility when you can have regular buses that take kids to school while also moving everyone else to where they want to go?
Out here your so called "regular" buses are anything but. They require an appointment with a set time in advance and last I looked was $50 per person per trip. Not the best idea. Given that here in Texas a tax cut was passed last year that reduced school taxes for many districts, I can see some of them adding fee for use to their fleets.
Damn, where I live, 1 hr bus ticket is 1.50€ for non-residents, 1€ for residents and 0.60€ for everyone under 18 and free for kids under 7 and pensioners (also free for families with 4 or more kids) that come every 10-20min (every 10 min in the mornings and after work/school, 20 min at any other time).
There are also period tickets, like unlimited rides for 30€ per month or 225€ per year (which also have discounts for residents).
So it is. Our two worlds are just that different
Yeah. I've never been to the US, so don't really know how it is there. To me it sounds like you guys have a lot to improve in the public transportation sector.
Same goes for where I grew up/live - kids that live far away enough to not be able to walk/bike get free passes for public transit and take that to school.
Time? Safety?
Here kids mostly walk.
It would help if driving a bus wasn't such a shitty job. "Okay, we're gonna pay you for three hours in the morning, then you'll have a five hour break, then we'll pay you another three hours. So it'll be an 11 hour day and we'll pay you for six of them. But you get a break!
When I was a kid, most of the school bus drivers were farmers who drove as a side job, and went back to doing their usual farm work during the middle of the day.
It's not that shitty, maybe. In the district where I work, we get $31 an hour (for about 5 hours a day), health insurance (the main reason I do it) and eventually a small pension. The break in the middle of the day is great since I can go for a bike ride and have lunch and a long nap, and I can take my elderly parents to doctors' appointments as necessary. In other districts it does suck though, since the pay can be much less (more like $18-22 an hour) with no benefits.
I've heard of a lot of people who drive a bus for the health insurance. Maybe their partner has a decent job that can cover most expenses, but no decent health plan. It's an alternative for some. It shouldn't be, but that's another issue.
Yeah, there are certainly worse jobs. Just that getting paid for 25 hours while effectively being busy for 50 hours a week (with breaks between) is a huge drawback.
“Oh, and you get to deal with kids the whole time but with almost no power to enforce the rules. What do you mean you want a bus monitor?”
My kid could take the bus but doesn’t because they’re overcrowded and rife with bullying.
Yep, that's been our experience. We have a niece who got a concussion from a bully (aluminum water bottle) and really nothing changed (so her parents had to find a way to get her off the bus). Two school years back and in a different area, there were so few drivers that my kiddo would come home at completely unpredictable times, anywhere from "on-time", up to 2 hours late, with very little communication. And we could basically see the school from our house.
Needless to say we no longer see the school bus as viable. Our society can't even get our kids to and from school in a functional way anymore. Things are really bad.
Edit: missed a word, grammar
I assume there wasn't a walking path even though the school was rather close?
Still sometimes shocked when hearing about how little public transport the U.S. has. I walked home by myself in my last year of primary school, then took the metro/bus in secondary school, which was pretty much normal.
There was no walking path, no. There was, however, a huge stretch of unused farm land between the neighborhood and the school. The owners of the land fought bitterly to prevent access.
Neat.
This is why this family is getting into politics. Campaigning starts March 4th. People won't vote for the school levies and much of the state money is going to charter schools, but gotta start somewhere.
Will taxes that used to cover bussing go down? Or is that money just going into pockets while the common person pays even more to get their kids to school?
Not in Chicago that's for sure. The city where you have to pay an 'entertainment tax' on your Netflix subscription.
Well, we just voted down all the levies to build new schools. So it's not like the schools are getting that money.
(If funding stays the same but students double, they have less money.)
load more comments
(2 replies)
It’s like no one anywhere wants to take responsibility for any of our systems.
They just blame it on the workers and say no one wants to work. Ignoring the fact that that has always been true and that the way to entice people to work is by giving them money. No one wants to share the wealth.
load more comments
(2 replies)
s/driver shortages/districts not willing to pay drivers enough to put up with snotnosed kids/g
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
253 points (99.2% liked)
News
23600 readers
3435 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS