Posted on 09/26/2011 5:43:52 AM PDT by WOBBLY BOB
The history of the federal program is a cautionary tale about changing public behavior - even when the public agrees with the goals. It was created by former Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar in 2000. Oberstar was appalled at the steep increases in childhood obesity and diabetes.
At the same time, he learned that 75 percent of children's trips away from home were in motor vehicles, up from 40 percent in the 1960s. "We have a generation of mobility-challenged children," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
Even more irritating: they have the school bus stops in some places 50-100 feet apart!
I know on my way to work, I see three sets of bus stops that distance from each other.
I have been told they can’t walk 50 feet to either stop because there is no sidewalk, so the bus has to stop at each one.
Sure.
Everyone’s acting like the kids walking or the parents driving them are the only two options. Has it ever occurred to the parents to walk WITH them? Quality time, exercise, and safety all wrapped into one. Gee, I should apply for a $10,000 government grant to type this idea up and submit it.
I hate politically-correct cutesy phrasing (so nobody is "offended")
Just come out and say it as it is, "we have a bunch of fat-ass, lazy kids, with parents that vote Democrat...."
Also...In the article mentioned the parent's concern about kidnapping, yet, as the number of children driven to school increased over the past 40 the violent crime against children has decreased. Seems to me that in this regard children are indeed safer.
I walked to elementary school, and no one cared about the route, or the weather. It was about 3/4mi the regular way, and a little less with the shortcut we almost always took, which we weren’t supposed to...
If it rained, you wore rain gear. If it snowed, you wore snow gear.
School was rarely cancelled for snow. This was in PA.
It wasn’t a small town either, and as far as I remember, there were never any vanished kids.
That's liberal-speak for 'lazy'.
Its not that the school districts believe that kids can’t walk where there are no sidewalks, its that if the parents complain for one reason or another, the school will have no choice but to provide bus service. They can intially say ‘no’, but typically districts lose this battle. Hence, they simple offer bus service up front to avoid any conflicts.
Of course the ultimate reason why kids can’t/don’t walk to school like previous generations is because of our land use patterns over the past 50 years in conjunction with the elimination of neighborhood schools and the implementation of mandatory bussing for desegregation/lib-tard social engineering purposes.
My kids could easily walk the half mile of sidewalks and paved trails to their school. Unfortunately, there is a fleet of panel vans, usually white and owned by illegals, that troll our neighborhoods for kids. Perhaps if the Fairfax County cops did something about this instead of feeling for the poor illegals and running speed traps, my kids would be able to walk to school as I did in Fairfax County 35 years ago.
Here locally, one of the School District Boards just voted to stop bus pickups for the kids that live within one mile of the school, and the majority of the neighborhoods have sidewalks and well marked crosswalks. The fuel savings alone is significant, not to mention the wear and tear on the buses the system still needs.
To kidnap them?
Your neighborhood needs a few Dads who are willing the settle this.
My kid lost 10 pounds just substituting a banana instead of cookies in her lunch and drinking fat free milk. I knew she’d do this once she got out of puberty. Playing tennis in the Florida heat didn’t hurt either.
Mobility challenged, ha! Is this the new term for fat and lazy?
“... troll our neighborhoods for kids”.
We have similar incidents every few years in our neighborhood (which is a block away from the elementary school). Vans will pull up to a child/group of children and offer “rides”. About ten years back (right before my oldest was going to kindergarten) a man in a van actually tried to grab a child and pull her into the vehicle. Children that walk alone or even in a group of other children seemed to be the “prey”. Granted, there were adults about ten houses up but they couldn’t react fast enough. So, I drive my children the one block to school... always have and always will.
A new version of "The jails are full but crime is down???"
In our neighborhood, that’s a factor as well. We have creeps trolling for kids about once every year or two. That’s enough to chill a lot of independent walking, but some kids still walk alone or in pairs anyway. Some parents do walk with their kids, and last year there was one route that had a “walking bus” for awhile, which is a parent in front, one in back, and the kids in-between, all walking together.
I blame two things: proliferation of porn, making wierdos want to try out in real life what they have been obsessing on, and illegal immigrant men here without wives.
Very cute! ( Sitting here chuckling.) :-)
I like the idea of a group with a parent in the front and one in the back. I would feel better with that concept; however, it is hard to enact. Many of the parents that drive simply drop their kids off and head to work (they don’t have the time to walk to school and home and then go to work). However, I disagree with “illegal immigrant men here without wives”... I don’t think they are trying to snatch a seven year old girl because they don’t have a wife. I think it is more of a sick need/desire... I mean what normal man would want to have sex with a child? Scares the heck out of me....
I had to walk to school barefoot, in the snow, uphill...both ways.
Our school district had 1-mile as the minimum distance from the school to be able to ride the bus (except for handicapped children).
Last year the school board was going to change that to a 1/2 mile. The parents (read “tax payers”), revolted and drummed the school board into submission: now we have a 2 mile minimum distance. The board was stating that we do not have sidewalks, several of the schools are out of the city limits and on county roads, etc... since we are a very rural city. Over 350 STUDENTS signed a petition/letter to the board stating that most of the time they walk through the woods and the roads have a full safety/emergency shoulder which allow them to walk further away from the vehicles than the sidewalks in the city limits (the high school, one of the junior highs and three of the elementary schools are OUTSIDE city limits).
Like you stated, the gas savings are great! We cut a little more than a 1/3 of all bus routes! SAVINGS!
I finished high school in an urban city setting 25 years ago and the minimum distance back then was 2-miles.
But, I started school in a rural area and the distance there was 3-miles. Heck, most kids were driving at the age of 16 and taking their siblings to and from school - so we had very few school buses! We also had many hardship licensees driving at the age of 15.
Most important, our school was three buildings all linked together in one complex covering ALL students in the district. Elementary, middle school and high school were just basically held in different hallways of the same building/complex. The buildings were nothing but metal buildings with walls stood up inside to separate halls and classes - nothing fancy or expensive! SAVINGS!
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