To think maybe an American style school bus could be best solution?

[whensitmyturn]

Just the every day drop off for primary schools seems to be getting worse, as intakes are increasing and barely any schools with parking available. Drop offs and pick ups just feel like they are getting more and more dangerous.
Just on an average day I see so many near misses with children and between cars.

Yes in a perfect world everyone would walk but so many drop and go straight to jobs etc

I just think it would be so much better if a school bus picked the children up from their roads, the actual catchment areas for primary schools aren't generally very big so there aren't that many roads to travel down, surely it would take so much traffic off the road?
Do Americans pay extra for this? I would absolutely pay for this but no idea how much it would cost or if even feasible?
Aibu to think it would solve so many safety/ traffic issues in the morning especially?

There are a couple of private schools in our area and the coaches for those clog up the surrounding roads and residents hate it.

I'd be willing to bet the residents would hate it just as much if each of those coaches wasn't there and there were fifty extra cars on the road in place of each coach...

School buses are free at the point of use where I live in the US. Property taxes fund schools and transportation is part of that. And most schools where I live are built with bus transportation in mind. They have wide driveways that the buses pull into so they don't back up traffic in the street.

makeitstopneville you're not wrong about bullying. My 5-year-old has just started K, and after his behavior completely fell apart the last few weeks, he broke down and told me that a fourth grader (age 11!) had been saying really mean things, blocking him down the aisle etc. and the audio/video from the bus confirmed that my son was telling the truth.

So the buses are fine, but I wish I hadn't judged them from a UK perspective, thinking that with young children involved, a monitor would be present. Some districts do provide, but it's quite a rarity. And now here I am, worried that my lovely boy is going to take this with him throughout what should be an exciting first year of elementary school.

There was a school bus to my old school, however it was before the mantra of parental 'choice' took over education and it was relatively easy to plan the route and operate it with a single double decker.

Most of us who took the bus lived on one of three housing estates on the far side of town to the school. It stopped in five or six locations and then drove on into school, taking 40 minutes or so. It worked because everyone from our town went to that school and very few (if any) kids from anywhere other than our town went there.

I wonder if bus routes like this would still be viable. The insane competition to get kids into what is perceived as the 'best' school in the local area rather than one close by and schools giving priority on criteria other than catchment area, means that children will becoming from all over. I'd suspect what you'd get was 10 or 12 sparsely occupied and expensive to run busses heading to the school from far and wide.

Yep I totally agree, I have often thought this too when watching American TV. I would happily pay for it too.

I live in the US. The buses are only for those who live more that two miles from school.

Our daughter walks to school. We do have good car pool systems where schools have a circular drive, you go in one side, pull up by the door, a pupil opens the door, your kids gets out and you drive forwards and get back to the main road. The car pool line can back up the roads around the school.

We are mostly in a walking district, but there are some school buses here which are free at the point of use. DS loves getting a yellow bus, just like on the TV!

Another US dweller. School buses work really well here, and we have K - 12 on every bus. Hardly any problems, but some of the kids who live further out take an hour to get to/from school.

Parents drive to the bus stops, but a group of 5 cars near a bus stop is nothing compared to hundreds at the school. (and it can be -40 in winter, so kids can't walk in those kinds of temp.)

There's also a kiss & fly drop/pick up, and parking is in a separate entrance.

But the schools were all purpose built so that none of their entrances were in major residential areas, and there's LOADS of space.

All paid for out of local taxes.

But then surely you just get hundreds of cars driving to the drop off point for the bus instead, clogging up a residential street which wont be very wide.

People who have to go somewhere after wont walk to the bus, walk home and drive off to work.

Kids here walk to the bus stop, on their own from a relatively (compared to the UK!) early age

In other places, the bus stops pretty much at the end of everyone's drive, so no one really walks very far

Do people love that far from their primary? You keep hearing about impossibly small catchments in England!

Anyway we walk. We are about the edge of the catchment and it's 15min walk for DC. There is plenty of parking around the school as most walk. I parked there this morning as I needed to go to the shops too. Plenty of unused parking spaces.

US here too. No, we don't pay for school buses :) I rode them when I was young (lived about ten miles from the school). They are hives of bullying and just bad behavior in general...most kids my age got a lot of their information about sex, drugs, whatever from older kids on the bus. We never had a monitor though, just one bus driver.

I live just a few blocks from the school my kids attend now so we walk, but my niece and nephew take the bus and it's about 15 miles.

I just can't see how it would work. Who pays for it? Where do you draw the line for closest pick-up?
We get a bus because we are on an unsafe walking route. Their are people who drive 100 yards to the bus stop. Then park right at a junction. No monitors on the buses here even for 4/5 year olds. You also have the issue that someone mentioned earlier lots of kids are collected by grandparents, afterschool care, childminders who won't necessarily be on the bus routes. Then throw into the mix children who don't go to their catchment school does that mean the buses are going all over town to collect kids? It also goes completely against the governments policy of trying to encourage kids to walk to school and the benefits that walking brings.
Maybe what they should do is prevent cars driving within 200 yards of every school from 10 mins before the bell to 10mins after. Therefore encourage more people to walk and make it safer around the schools for kids.

I have some fond memories of riding the school bus as a child. I lived out in the country, and the ride was 45 minutes to an hour each way. But I had "bus friends" that I used to sit with, and yes, we did educate each other about all sorts of things, including the facts of life (based largely on observation of farm animals). On the ride home, the driver would sometimes stop at a shop in a small town we went through, and we would get off and buy snacks (that would not happen today).

When my children were growing up, we lived in a town and the bus stopped at the end of our street so they did not have far to walk. And once they turned 16, they drove themselves to school, which is also fairly common in the US. No one over 16 wants to be on a school bus.

I think the US system works as part of the system ie you go to the school in your area, not one of 10. The schools are much bigger and again if you are in area X you go to school X, along with 3000 other kids.

They can work really well BUT need to be properly managed and monitored.
There is no monitoring on ours, but the Y1 and YR kids need to be collected by an adult. So the mums have to do it. It is a nightmare, and has caused me much stress this year. You only need a couple of selfish parents,and a couple of boisterous kids, and it is living hell.

I can't see it working on many UK schools layouts and roads. Certainly our old British primary, on a dead end with a roundabout at the bottom as a turning circle would be a nightmare. Our (non UK, non US) school has a MASSIVE carpark for all the busses - we park in space 34, so maybe 100 busses, plus twice the space for cars. It is strictly monitored to there is no bus movement from 5 mins before the bell goes to reduce "traffic-child interactions". The permitted time to restart driving seems to be "when you have your bus load of kids".

Previous school used to give me a missed call as they collected/dropped the previous child, so I could be waiting at the corner. This school we all go to a central point to get on the bus in the morning, but the kids get dropped at the door. It is petrifying to get a text from school to request reason for absence when you put them on the bus in the morning. Schools cannot afford to fcuk up registers and reporting of absences if a system like this is used.

I agree. I've often thought this. My nephews had this in Canada and it was great.

DD gets the school bus to high school as the route is too dangerous to walk (country roads with no pavements) and it's been great. I drive past the High school sometimes and it's chaos outside.

Where I work now there is a drop off point, but parents keep parking there - especially those parents with transit vans. I reckon I see a 'near miss' most mornings. It's bloody annoying. I leave later than I have to every night because the idiots block the road constantly - even with a 50 space car park a matter of metres away.

"The schools are much bigger and again if you are in area X you go to school X, along with 3000 other kids."
There are rural schools in my area school district with 20-50 students K-8 (5-14). There's a single high school for the whole area, and even it has fewer than 1000 students. They're entirely catchment based though - you go to the nearest school unless that school doesn't provide the services you need (SEN, etc.) so they can generally manage with very few buses for the entire area. Although, again, it's not unusual for kids to be on the bus for up to, or over, an hour each way.
But there's no way a system like that would run without buses, there's no public transportation option.

The US system is just different. It is more necessary. Most people can't walk to school there. You don't get a choice of schools. Schools are mostly newer so built to accommodate buses. Many British schools are Victorian or on the site of older, prewar schools.

The school bus system in the US is dated in terms of supervision. No adults except the driver and these days the driver won't get involved in behaviour anyway unless it's interfering with driving. It's too expensive to add additional staff to supervise but the schools can't do without the buses so nothing changes.

Not really related, possibly on a budget level, but also, in the US parents are expected to provide classroom stationery which is different to the UK where you normally send your child in with nothing except themselves.

It's comparing apples and oranges to say they have this system and it works, why can't we have that?

If th catchment area isn't that big, and it isn't for the primaries round here, then why are you not walking? Take it in turns to be the parent that makes sure all the little ones get into school, drop and go at the playground on a shared basis.

Unfortunately much of the congestion (and I live on a street with several schools) is due to lazy arsed parents who CBA walking more than twenty feet.

We do have one yellow American bus here, it serves the catholic primary school which has covers a much bigger area for its intake. It can't usually park in it's designated lay by though, because that is full of lazy arsed parents.

Just to add, when mine were little our primary had walking buses on various routes, children in bright tabards in a line being walked from home on certain routes to school. It was great but sAdly stopped when the volunteer parents own children left the school.

This is a better way to go, but would probably involve paying for the service to ensure it continued.

Mine go on the bus from reception, a traffic calming method from the school. It is amazing!! I honestly dont know why more schools dont do it. I would actually pay for the privilege if it was needed!

Oh and walking buses! That would be a great idea. I really feel that people moan about the issue but often dont be pro active about making it better. Looking for alternativea would help