In all my parenting years, and years as a parent educator and consultant, I have never heard one positive thing about school bus rides. Not from any kids. Not from any parents.
I have heard tale upon tale about what a negative experience for children a ride on the school bus has become.
Let's think about it. For two large chunks of your child's time away from you each school day, they are sitting ducks in a large vehicle that doesn't use seatbelts and the only adult anywhere around is
busy driving the bus! Each standard North American school bus has a maximum capacity of 72 passengers. Where have you ever seen one adult responsible for the safety of 72 children?
In Sunday School settings, the ratio of adults to kids for a kindergarten class is 2:10. Each adult focuses on 5 kids. By the time kids are in middle elementary grades, there would be 2:16. Study after study has shown that no one adult can effectively teach/impact/relate to more than 8 kids at a time. So what in the world are we doing to our children by squishing them into bus seats like little sardines?
We are throwing them into a tin tank to fend for themselves. That one bus driver can't possibly see everything going on, and often there are no enforced standard expectatoins. Kids tell me there is a difference between the morning driver and the afternoon driver. Sometimes buses include an age range from K all the way to 12th grade. Once kids learn that the driver is not going to enforce calm, respectful behavior they hurl themselves into seeing how much they can get away with. One child recently told me another child was "giving her the finger", hitting, kicking and pulling her hair. The driver did not see it.
Another child told me that due to a bus driver's resignation, her bus combined their route with the vacant bus's and there are now three children per seat! If there are 18 row of six kids, that means 108 kids are under the care of just one adult. This child tells me she is regularly bullied every afternoon.
If your child has had a good day at school and might be eager to tell you (or show you) all about it, that warm feeling can be heavilly dampened by a bad experience on the ride home. Even if they aren't the kid getting bullied, they are aware of it. And if they have a driver that doesn't control the volume level, they hear it.
And what if they have an absurdly long bus ride? We lived on the edge of town and were the first pick up but the last drop off. That meant our second grader got off the bus at 5:00 p.m. when school let out at 3:40. In the winter, it was literally dark when he came home. Once we realized this, we tried as often as possible to be at school to drive him home instead.
Later we switched to a nearby charter school that the district provided busing for. The only problem was it took three different buses to get him there. So I became one of the moms in the parking lot picking him up. Today, the pick up line at that school winds its way beyond the parking lot and way down the street. More and more parents are limiting their child's exposure to other unsupervized kids.
In our lives, the bus became an emergency back up. Nothing beats the conversations while you are driving with your kids. It is valuable time redeemed.
In my perfect world, there would be at least two other adults on each bus sitting 36 kids apart. I would play calm, classical music and assign seats. There would be zero tolerance for the smallest twitch and serious consequences - including a behavior class - that followed.
Give your child a blessing by being the first face they see after a long day at school, you won't be sorry for that special time, ever. And if you learn that your child is one of the bullies, come down hard on them and insist they make apologies immediately. Forget being defensive, character is at stake.
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