ANDERSON, Ind. —
Our oldest grandson, Ronnie, has started second grade. His mommy takes him to school every morning and picks him up in the afternoon. That’s because no school bus goes through his neighborhood.
I should mention Ronnie doesn’t live in Anderson. If he did, a big yellow school bus likely would stop near his front door and pick him up every morning. But he lives in Greenfield. Last year he took the bus, but he has moved a mile or so closer to school. That puts him within a mile radius of J.B. Stephens Elementary, and no bus service is offered for kids who live that close to school.
It gets better, his mom Ruth says. When he enters intermediate school, she has to take him to Stephens Elementary where he catches a shuttle bus to the intermediate school.
Anderson has geared its safety and transportation policy around universal school busing for quite a few years now. Doesn’t matter if a kid lives a block from school, the sidewalks and environments are deemed inadequate to land him safely in school, so he or she is expected to ride the bus or come in a car.
The humongous school budget deficits have led school officials to explore just about every facet of education. But cutbacks in school busing are on the back burner. Some have suggested charging kids to ride the bus, but it seems to be regarded as an entitlement these days.
Greenfield’s transportation policy obviously reflects the reality that Anderson is not the only school system with budgetary problems. But apparently the idea of universal busing is something less than a sacred cow down there.
When I was in grade school in Minnesota, school buses were reserved for kids who lived a long, long way from school. Not only that, but if you lived within a mile of school, you weren’t even supposed to ride your bike to school.
Moving to Anderson, I discovered kids in the city did have buses to school, but they were run by the city bus system and you paid to ride them, albeit a reduced rate (if you didn’t forget your pass). By the time I was in high school, the route that came within a block of my house was discontinued, and I figured if I had to walk five blocks to catch a bus, I’d walk the rest of the way to Anderson High School (THE AHS, at 13th and Lincoln). Rain or snow, hot or cold, uphill both ways and all that.
Neighborhood schools were still in vogue during my kids’ elementary days, so they didn’t ride the bus until junior high. Nowadays there are no “walking zones” for Anderson Community Schools kids.
It may come to that someday, though. There aren’t many schools or programs left to pare, and efforts to balance the budget may have to extend into the transportation realm.
Jim Bailey’s column appears on Wednesday. He can be reached by e-mail at jameshenrybailey@earthlink.net.
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