Busses - OK, lets talk about responsibility
August 14th, 2006 by Atomictumor
Eaves makes a good point in a previous post about how parents, and really, the city at large are ultimately responsible for ensuring that everybody gets home from school safely. Right now, that issue is largely being ignored in favor of finger pointing at who’s at fault (council, school board, transportation dept, martians, etc).
I know its an Oak Ridge pastime, especially around politics season, to bitch about how dumb the other guys are, and lord knows I’m guilty of it myself, but its time we grew up and started getting proactive toward finding a solution, so thats what this post is for.
Heres what I would like to see:
- A group of citizens who are willing to donate their time and, if necessary, other resources toward making sure that nothing nasty happens this year.
- A central point of contact for all of Oak Ridge who will be coordinating these efforts, to make sure that we have universal blanket coverage for all the schools (i.e. if a particular PTO isn’t willing to step up, we’ll have people who can fill in). Again, this isn’t for finger pointing, this is for making sure that kids are safe.
- What the police are doing to assist. We’ll need traffic support. Right now, at Willowbrook at 3:30 traffic is backed up to Robertsville Rd. Thats a good stretch of land that is blocked by a line of cars waiting to get into Willowbrook, and lots of people are going to be passing in the left lane. We need to make sure thats safe. I can see worse problems at Woodland and Glenwood, because of the traffic and landscape.
- Ultimately, what I’d like to see out of this is a group of people who are willing to stand up in front of council (and whoever else) in favor of schools. Dammit, I moved here so my kids could go to school in Oak Ridge. I want the politicans in town to recognize that fact. We have too many people here complaining about the school board getting “blank checks” and knowing absolutely nothing about what is needed to run a top rate school system.
These people are the voices that the politicians here hear most often. We need to make sure they hear voices in support of schools. Theres a lot of em on this page, but I don’t think very many council members hang out here.
If we can organize, we can win. Yes, it’ll take some dedication, and yes, it’ll be a thankless, pain in the ass job, but thats what we have to do, because nobody else appears interested in doing it for us.
Anybody got any thoughts? Â Lets keep it in this thread.
August 14th, 2006 at 9:11 am
On my drive to and from school this morning, I noticed two things:
1. There were three cops in and around the WB are. One was a motorcycle cop at the intersection of Robertsville and N. Illinois. Another had pulled over someone and was writing a ticket on Robertsville, and the other was sitting closer to the school. Are they going to be there every day, and, if so, how much money is being paid for the police to sit around and babysit? When you add up all the cops at all the schools, how much money is being spent on salary, gas, etc? What is being neglected by them sitting there instead of actively patrolling the city?
2. I did not see a single walker anywhere. I even took the long way home, hoping to get an idea of how many kids would be walking now that school’s fully in session. I didn’t see any. Perhaps since it’s the first day, most parents are driving their kids to school. Tomorrow might have a better turn out. I was relieved, however, to find that people seemed to be driving a lot more responsibly than usual.
I don’t have any good answers for the questions you asked, AT, but there was a lot of talk about it at the PTO meeting and it was decided we’d have another meeting to discuss it further.
I think some of the things that we can personally look into (and possibly even spearhead if necessary) is the formation of carpools and/or walking pools. I don’t know if the PTO would be willing to handle the cost, but a good, well-written survey sent home to all parents in an attempt to organize such pools might not be a bad place to start. Or if we could have a representative from each road that is being left out of the bussing route could talk to neighbors and try to get pools started on a smaller level.
I also think we need to explore things such as bus stops (how much gas (and brakes and maintenance) could be saved if buses didn’t stop at every single house?) and graduated bussing (0 or .5 miles for elementary, 1.0 for middle, 1.5 for high school).
/rant
August 14th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Community bussing is a great idea. I don’t mind the idea of kids walking down the road, particularly if theres a group of them, and its just down a block or so. We’d still need the same amount of busses/drivers, tho, so I don’t see how it’d save a lot of $$$.
August 14th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Well, like I said, it’d save at least a little money on gas, brake changes, general maintenance, etc. And it would save time. If time could be saved, and none of the busses are at full capacity, it’s possible that one bus could pick up many more kids than it carries presently. (Although I’d have to ask Ms. Miller et. al. at what capacity the busses are at now.)
I’m not suggesting that it’ll save us that $500,000, though.
August 14th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Despite my own rantings and ravings, I completely agree that our efforts need to be directed at finding solutions.
I think that the best thing we can possibly do is educate ourselves on every aspect of the situation. The Willow Brook PTO meeting on August 8 provided a good start. However, because of legal and liability issues, the PTO can only do so much. I think that it would be wise to find out exactly what is allowed so that the WB PTO, other schools’ PTOs, and other existing organizations can be effectively utilized.
I think that there are many positives about community bus stops and graduated bussing. I think that using a combination of those could save some real dollars. Probably not enough to cover the deficit, but it would certainly be a good start.
And yes, Council needs to be addressed regularly by a variety of citizens in support of education. Council needs to know that we exist. Don’t want to go to a meeting? Write a letter to them. Write a letter to the editor. Put a sign in your yard. Help me come up with a bumper sticker slogan so I can get the dang things printed up.
One of my concerns is that the symptom (bus cuts) will be addressed but the cause (education no longer on Council’s radar) will not. I think that we need to find a balanced, unified message to bring.
August 14th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Yeah, I’m not as interested in the symptoms, because that boat has taken off. People are (finally) aware of the problem, and that’ll address itself. We need to deal with the root cause, and get council to understand that there are enough people thinking our way to put a threat to their future interests.
August 14th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Right on.
August 14th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Man you are a bunch of smart people. Smart and well intended.
Does anyone have any idea exactly how many school aged children (by school) are actually affected by the walk zone rule? That might be helpful in understanding just how to approach to problem.
August 14th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Thats what kinda suprised me about GAC this morn, saying that she didn’t see a lot of walkers. Seems to me that what would be a cool thing would be to try to get an idea from parents on what routes kids will be walking on, and have some people out there to slow traffic down as necessary, or ’shephard’ the kids.
Granted, a lot of folks wouldn’t be crazy about telling strangers how their kids walk to school…
August 14th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
This may sound like a stupid question, but what time to elementary school kids report to school in the am?
August 14th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
daco, school officially starts at 8:30, but children can arrive as early as 7:45 for breakfast.
The schools could give us official numbers as to how many children are affected, but nothing beyond that. As in, they couldn’t give us addresses or anything, so that we could approach the parents at their homes for petition signing, etc.
Mrs. Miller (WB principal) said that there are approximately 15-25 students walking unattended every day. That’s not including however many kids meet their parents or other adults, or who are now picked up after school. She also gave us the number of new car riders, but I can’t remember it and wouldn’t want to take a guess. Mrs. Eaves, do you remember what she said?
August 14th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Back in early June, Netmom posted the number of children affected on her site:
“How many kids are affected? 734, at current enrollment, by school as follows:
* Robertsville Middle: 128
* Jefferson Middle: 141
* Glenwood Elementary: 77
* Linden Elementary: 102
* Willowbrook Elementary: 136
* Woodland Elementary: 130″
Mrs. Miller at WB has said that the school now has 150 unique cars that go through the afternoon car rider line. If memory serves me well, I believe that she said that’s an increase of about 100 from last year. Would need to double check that, though.
August 14th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
MAN, that is a bunch of youngsters.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Another thought on responsibility:
Who’s responsible for clearing growth off of sidewalks? Does that fall to the homeowner, or the city? If it’s the homeowner, then they should be warned, then fined, for overgrowth. Same goes for people parking their cars on the sidewalk. It could force walking kids into the street. (That, and those people piss me off.)
And the city needs to put up signs (as well as paint) for children crossing any time a sidewalk changes sides of the road. I was driving down California a minute ago and on a rather steep part of the hill, the sidewalk flips. Signs or a painted crossing might make it a little safer.
I’d also like to see crossing signs put up on major intersections where kids will be likely to cross. It might be redundant, but people might need to be reminded to be safe.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
It has to be the responsibility of the city GAC. Good luck with that one. The sidewalks in the older neighborhoods are in horrible shape. The sidewalk across the street from my house is downright dangerous.