Comments

1
Great solution. Helps for child obesity, too.
2
Wait, so how many drivers, mechanics, and so on will be fired to save these 45 teachers? Notice it says "take 80 buses off the street" instead of "fire 80 bus drivers"
3
But if the parents walk the kids to school, they might get involved in their educations, and the kids might get exercise and ...

oh. never mind. community stops sounds like what we used to do in rural areas.
4
This actually makes a ton of sense. Seattle already has a subsidized transportation infrastructure in place, dedicated school buses are superfluous. Plus, I remember those giant orange things were a fucking menace.
5
Sarcasm, right, @4? My antennae are drooping a little today.
6
@4 I honestly have no idea about this, but it seems to me that school buses provide a much safer option than a metro bus. I saw a fair number of police reports in the past few months of middle and high school-aged kids getting mugged while waiting for or walking to bus stops on their way to/from school.
7
Ahh, sarcasm. Okay.
8
@6 usually to steal their cell phones and iPods. Or sneakers.
9
this is so much better than "punishing success".
10
@2: Public education exists to serve the public, not as a government jobs program. If we can find a way to deliver the same service with fewer public employees, or the same service but pay public employees less for providing it, that is a win, not a loss, for the public.
11
Kids take the regular old bus to get to school in the big city all over the country. I'm sure the children of Seattle are capable of that as well. There isn't money in the budget for parents that find their local school unacceptable and don't want their children riding Metro and can't make time to get their children that the school of their choosing.
12
@11 exactly. I understand the reasons for letting people choose whatever school they want (which is actually scaling back recently), but providing a second bus system just to accomodate this? Crazy.
13
So, I am going to take issue with the better for the environment argument. Have you ever noticed how many fewer cars are on the road when school is not in session. Exclude holidays and summer vacation - there could be multiple reasons for lighter traffic during those times. Just look at the teacher in-service days. It is quite remarkable how many families drive their kids to school. We often do. We are more than a mile away from our elementary school (the closest school to us). What with getting the 15 year old out the door for public transportation, getting the baby to a neighbors house and taking the bus downtown to my own job (my partner telecommutes from home), it is a little busy at our house. We walk when we can. Anyway - more than a mile from school but in the walk zone - so no bus. Taking these bus routes off the table means more individual families will be driving. More traffic on the roads.
Also - my kid is one of those kids taking public transportation who got hassled and robbed this year - lost his phone, not an iphone, just a phone.
14
Most public-transit wonks will tell you that having both School buses and Metro is not a redundancy. Removing the school buses results in extreme "peaking" on the public transit system nearby, peaking that the system simply can not handle. When you have 1500 high school students all released at the same time of day, waiting at Metro stops for regular-schedule buses that have a 115 passenger legal capacity (62 seated, 53 standing), the system breaks down.

This results in buses with passenger loads far beyond their safe & legal capacity, and far-reaching delays in the system ... when Garfield High lets out in the CD, buses show up 20 minutes late in Wallingford, bunched.

In cities that eliminate their school buses, typically the public transit agency turns around and asks the school district for money to have 10 extra buses idling in front of the schools at final bell to handle the sudden peak load. The school district pretty much never agrees, so the transit system takes it on the chin, so that the school district can save their own budget.

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