Though there were no specific interview questions about the SBCSC transportation system, it is important to make note of the fact that five of the seven participants mentioned, on their own, frequent late buses as a frustration that made the distance from home to school even more difficult. These parents had much to offer about the logistics of the busing program.
Several times during the school year, parents explained, they receive text messages that say the bus is going to be two hours late picking their children up in the morning. These are not weather delays, and the delays seem to be related to just one bus each time. So, for some students, their parents have to go to work in the morning, and the children are then on their own to catch the late bus. Two different participants shared about how difficult the situation was and how there were times when their children missed the late bus on those days and just had to stay home from school because nobody could drive them to school. It is very difficult for some families. One parent described, “Or if they miss the bus, God forbid, when it’s two hours late, then you have to find a way to get them to thirty minutes away.”
This also made at least one parent very nervous about her child’s
whereabouts. She remarked, “I’m a working mother, so when I’m thinking my child’s on the bus, she ain’t even gotten picked up yet.” Another parent was upset about the
they have a two-hour delay, so I’m a little upset about that because there’s something they’re missing in class.”
Unfortunately, the parents in the interview group also had complaints about busing in the afternoons. The same anxiety that parents felt when the bus was late in the morning reappeared when buses were late in the afternoon. One mother shared, “And now they have the bus system all messed up. Maybe ten or fifteen times this year alone, we get a message saying our child is going to be an hour and a half late. You just sit at the bus stop and wait.”
Besides the nervousness, there is also an element of inconvenience when buses are late in the afternoon, and Greene parents feel they do not have as many options as they would if the school were closer. One participant explained, “It’s a big deal when they tell you an hour and a half to two hours, and if your kids stayed close, they could just walk home or you could meet them at the school and walk a few blocks.” While this study is not designed to tackle issues surrounding the perceived challenges that the SBCSC’s transportation department faces, the concerns surfaced enough times in the research that it is worth noting that this is a source of frustration for Greene parents, and it is a problem that may lend itself to further research.
Another aspect of transportation, though, relates to the other options available to families. Of the seven participants interviewed, six parents volunteered information about their family’s transportation situation. The idea of the “single-car family” is one that surfaced several times in conversations. Three parents indicated that their family did not have a car at all, two others said they had one car for the whole family, and one
remarked that while she did own a car, she was not able to drive, so she had to find
someone else to drive her if she needed to go to the school.
Parents offered that their families do not have cars for one of several
reasons. Either they cannot afford a car or their car needs repairs they cannot afford and is not drivable. One parent shared, “Well, at first I didn’t have a vehicle because my vehicle was in the shop. It was in the shop for a while, so that was the biggest part of the transportation issue. Now that it’s out of the shop, it needs to go back.” This same parent went on to summarize that the main problem with her child’s assignment to Greene School is an issue of “transportation, not the distance.” Later in the conversation she pointed out that if her child could walk to a neighborhood school that would alleviate some of the stress.
Families with only one car often have to use that car to go to work or for a partner or adult child to go to work. One participant explained, “I’m sharing [the car] with my significant other, and he has to go to work and so on and so forth.” Sometimes, if a car was needed for school when the car was already committed to work, the child simply could not go to school that day.
Parents also asserted that they thought it would be helpful if their children attended a school that they could walk to from their homes. With some of the SBCSC transportation issues, one parent posited, “They don’t have many people to drive the bus now, so if your kid stayed close, you could walk to school as far as a middle school-aged child like my daughter.”
Some participants also cited the fact that Greene School is not on a public
the SBCSC bus, her next best option to get her child to school would be public
transportation but then lamented that Greene was located too far out in the country to be accessible by the city bus. She said, “If she went to Dickinson [School], that’s close. If she missed the bus, she could actually catch the Transpo bus. That’s cheaper than me trying to find someone to take my child to school.”