Posted on 01/20/2005 4:49:01 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
SYRACUSE NY--When Lynnee Westbrook thinks about what her son went through her eyes well up. She says her two children take the school bus everyday, so she can't understand why the vice principal at McKinley Brighton told her 5-year-old son to walk home.
Under school policy, students must live more than a mile and a half to be bused. School spokesperson Neil Driscoll says Kevin is listed as a walker and lives on Newell Street, a block away from the school. Westbrook says they actually live on West Brighton Avenue and she doesn't know how the school got that information. She says her son walked several blocks to his daycare, where he gets dropped off after school.
"My baby who is 5-years-old who never walked anywhere a day in his life has to cross over major intersections to get to school to daycare. I felt that was very unacceptable," Westbrook said.
Westbrook says when she contacted the school, the vice principal had no knowledge of her child and said her son may have gotten confused with another conversation she was having with an older student.
"What's the need for him to walk? Why wasn't I informed? If he if missed his bus or whatever, you know that was my point. Nobody contacted me or they didn't contact emergency contact," Westbrook said.
"It was cold and my stuff was falling down, and I had to put my gloves in my book bag. I put my hands in my pocket," said Kevin Jennings, 5-year-old forced to walk home.
Kevin's mom says she wants to get to the bottom of what went wrong. Westbrook says she plans to get to the bottom of this during a meeting with the vice principal of the school Thursday.
Not if they are made to retract into the seats. Sounds like a lame excuse to not upgrade buses.
Theoretically, wouldn't that be true with cars as well?
Maybe you should just stop posting about this subject because you have obviously missed the point.
The issue is not with the child having to walk or not, it's that the school made a decision and never contacted the parent.
I really do not see how the size of the government has anything to do with the principal or vice principal or even the darned secretary or lunch lady calling the mother and letting her know what is going on before she finds out later when her kid never shows up at day care or home.
Stuff happens. The most important thing is to not panic. It's the parents' reactions in most of these kinds of situations that does the most harm to the child. In this story the kid was probably not traumatized until his mother went off the deep end. Even at the age of five, there are lessons to be learned about dealing with life's missteps.
Depends on the level of sacrifice that a parent is willing to make.
I have a 5 year old, too & do not want her walking anywhere without the supervision of an adult I know and trust.
I agree with this parent.
There's actually a very good reason for that.
First, the seats are designed to provide safety so the kids don't need a seat belt... at least that's what they say and I don't have data to argue for or against that claim.
Second, if there were an emergency that required all the children to exit the bus quickly, a fire for example, seat belts would slow the process and possible cost lives.
I'm not an expert, but that's what was explained to me. Could be total BS.
And that's... bad?
Your first reaction was correct. The dissolution of the moral fabric and consensus of our society has made a different world than that in which I grew up, unfortunately. So a parent's proper main objective — or one of them — is to make sure the child attains an age at which he can learn to distinguish between good strangers and bad.
Dan
And for anyone arguing the "in my day" BS, public-schools are a relatively recent invention; we could put them back into the textile factories and make some money of the little freeloaders if we really wanted to go back to the mythical "Good Old Days."
"What every other kid in the school district must do" was not the concern nor responsibility of the Mother nor of this thread.
There is no mention of the unsupervised travels of "every other kid in the school district." One hopefully can assume that "every other kid in the school district" has adequate supervision in their individual itineraries.
"At first I thought that was a good thing, but thinking about it, I fear for the tyke. He is growing up with a deep ingrained distrust of all strangers.
Years ago, my youngest (30 now) owned the neighborhood. The only person that was a stranger was somebody he hadn't met yet"
Sorry but I have to point out your own contradiction. You say the little boy will grow with an ingrained distrust but it was okay for your boy to view people as a stranger he had not yet met. The little boy in Walmart never "met" you before so you in fact like all other unmet people ARE and will be "strangers" to him.
You may have a thought to offer.
(c8
'Stuff happens. The most important thing is to not panic. It's the parents' reactions in most of these kinds of situations that does the most harm to the child. In this story the kid was probably not traumatized until his mother went off the deep end. Even at the age of five, there are lessons to be learned about dealing with life's missteps.'
Thank you for your sanity. The kids feed off the parents' (which I have learned the hard way myself) reactions to situations.
If a bus hit a wall, wouldn't all the kids go forward into the seat ahead of them?
I would think the fire issue would be the same with minivans as well.
Then she should think about whether having kids is a good thing if she expects someone else to care for them ALL DAY. Why bring a child into the world if you are going to demand that someone else care for him/her? IMO, it's selfish.
lokibob's kids obviously didn't live in this day and age. or didn't live in a major metropolitan area.
Not necessarily true. In our schools, most communications from the school to the parents are sent home with the kids. We receive very little correspondence via mail. If this child is the woman's oldest, it's quite possible for the school to have the wrong address and the mother not know.
Since when are you the posting police? Just because some people don't agree with you doesn't mean they can't have an opinion also.
I live in the New Orleans metro area. My twin boy and girl are almost 14. I pick them up at the bus stop or arrange to have it done daily. One day the bus driver decided to change the drop off space for my daughter. To quote my military background, I ripped them a new one.
Maybe I am overprotective but all I can remember is that story a few years ago where a 13 year old girl was killed in a Las Vegas bathroom.
I dont care how far it was they changed without notifying the parent.
I posted articles a couple of years back regarding school bus accidents and the number of children injured and killed because they went through the windshield of the bus, through the side windows, and the injuries sustained when the kids were thrown from their seats and wound up under the seats getting their arms broken.
In trying to think back on how many bus fires I have heard of, compared to how many bus accidents I have heard of, I'd ahve to say that I've heard of far more bus accidents.
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