Kids going to and from school (Atlanta, North Atlanta: health insurance, schools, property taxes)

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by arjay57

In some areas, probably half or more of the kids are in private school. So they need to be picked up and dropped off.

In many cases, the kids in public school also need a ride. They may be some distance from the bus stop or they may have a lot to carry. They probably have athletics and/or music lessons after school. And who wants their 6 year old standing out beside a busy road?

There's also the bullying issue:

Part of growing up

[BR Valentine]

Originally Posted by aries4118

Not in elementary school.

And we can address the public school parent drop off. No one is talking about the privates—besides they have their carpools, private buses, and MARTA-ride groups (Woodward).

The problem with lack of bus-riding being the cause of traffic issues seems to be more elementary-oriented. I think this can be addressed and alleviated.


As for middle and high school buses: I am all for permanently investing in 1-3 Bus Monitors per Bus. Good investment. Improves Safety and Well-Being. Money well-spent.

My experience as a parent is that this is not primarily an elementary issue. It happens across all grades. We started driving our kids to school in elementary school because of overcrowding on the busses and have continued to drive them through high school for other reasons. Where elementary schools probably are a bigger issue is due to the loading / unloading process from cars being slower with younger kids which exacerbates the traffic issues. While bus monitors might be a good idea, if the job does not provide access to health benefits it’s going to be next to impossible to staff those positions and it will be hard even with benefits. Also, I’m curious to know what you’re going to cut from current school budgets to pay for monitors.


The key question is whether the current bus fleets in the central perimeter have significant excess capacity. I’m skeptical that’s the case. My experience is that school districts operate the absolute bare minimum number of busses possible based on estimated demand and factoring in the estimated number of kids who will be driven and/or walk. In my area many kids get driven to school yet the busses are full. Moving more kids onto busses and out of cars is more likely than not going to have a non-trivial cost associated with it. Again, where does the money come from to add bus capacity? There’s the challenging of simply finding enough drivers to operate additional busses regardless of cost as well. And none the above takes into account what happens as charters and vouchers are promoted both of which more widely disperse students geographically.

This likely isn’t a problem for which there is a little to no-cost ready solution. I’m not arguing that it isn’t possible to reduce the number of kids being driven to school but the solution(s) are going to be more complex than just, “Hey parents, stop treating your kids like snowflakes and put them on the bus.”

[AtlJan]

In Buckhead (and other areas of the metro, see Decatur), as the public schools have regained popularity, residents of good zones have fought redistricting and the zones have gotten bigger, and kids are going to 5 different campuses during their school years. For example Morris Brandon elementary now uses the old Margaret Mitchell elementary building as its K-2 primary school. The old Northside High School is the 7 & 8th grade campus of Sutton Middle School, the old Sutton Middle School is the 6th grade academy and on and on. The old North Fulton High School (which sits squarely in a residential area) is now a private school, leaving one mega public high school at the edge of the district, NAHS. Five campuses mean fewer kids can walk to school, and if they can walk its only for a few years, then they're off to a different campus. Busses drop kids at one campus then head to the second campus, meaning longer commutes for the kids, which fewer parents are willing to tolerate.

The school with the highest percentage of walkers in our area is Christ the King--so don't discount that some of our private schoolers do walk. CTK parents have chosen to live where their kids can walk to school K-8. Over that same time period, many public school kids would be at 4 different campuses.

[jeoff]

Well, this is first year that the APS middle school buses were not terrible, just a little frustrating—which is a noticeable improvement (all of the bus problems throughout the day snowball, so since the middle schoolers start latest, they get the most problems). I am not sure how much more capacity APS could really take, the buses are pretty full, and they have a hard time getting drivers, and until very recently there were obvious problems with bus maintenance. The guy in charge of transportation seems nice, and is apologetic when there is a problem—and I think he has improved things, but I can’t imagine large increases in capacity in the short-term.

[toll_booth]

It'd be nice if more schools could do what Woodward does and put about a hundred of their students all on MARTA at once.

[Forhall]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Part of growing up

I hope that's sarcasm. Bullying is not part of growing up.

What I don't get is why traffic is worse at rush hour (4-7pm) when school is in session, when schools get out at 2-3pm. What are all these parents doing clogging up traffic an extra 4 hours after school gets our?

[arjay57]

Let's bear in mind that tens of thousands of these kids are probably getting ferried by grandparents, and we know what that means. Older folks tend to have stiff necks and are not the best at looking to the side or behind themselves.

[BR Valentine]

Originally Posted by Forhall

I hope that's sarcasm. Bullying is not part of growing up.

What I don't get is why traffic is worse at rush hour (4-7pm) when school is in session, when schools get out at 2-3pm. What are all these parents doing clogging up traffic an extra 4 hours after school gets our?

Off the top of my head, APS, Fulton and Forsyth (and probably others) dismiss high school and middle school between 3:30 and 4:15 depending on the district. Add in parents driving kids to after school activities and there’s your answer. My wife and I have been driving our kids to after school activities between 4:30 and 6:30 for years.

[arjay57]

It wouldn't surprise me if there were several million trips a day in the ATL related to transporting our younger folk.

However, that doesn't seem to draw a lot of attention in regional transportation discussions and planning.

[BR Valentine]

Originally Posted by AtlJan

In Buckhead (and other areas of the metro, see Decatur), as the public schools have regained popularity, residents of good zones have fought redistricting and the zones have gotten bigger, and kids are going to 5 different campuses during their school years. For example Morris Brandon elementary now uses the old Margaret Mitchell elementary building as its K-2 primary school. The old Northside High School is the 7 & 8th grade campus of Sutton Middle School, the old Sutton Middle School is the 6th grade academy and on and on. The old North Fulton High School (which sits squarely in a residential area) is now a private school, leaving one mega public high school at the edge of the district, NAHS. Five campuses mean fewer kids can walk to school, and if they can walk its only for a few years, then they're off to a different campus. Busses drop kids at one campus then head to the second campus, meaning longer commutes for the kids, which fewer parents are willing to tolerate.

The school with the highest percentage of walkers in our area is Christ the King--so don't discount that some of our private schoolers do walk. CTK parents have chosen to live where their kids can walk to school K-8. Over that same time period, many public school kids would be at 4 different campuses.

The fundamental issue isn’t school attendance boundaries. The issues are that the area in question mostly doesn’t have the housing density to support widespread walking to school, bus capacity, the cost associated with increasing bus capacity and the fact that the proliferation of school choice always reduces the aggregate frequency of children walking to school. The public invariably fails to account for the increased transportation expense and traffic generated by school choice. My childhood neighborhood is an example of how school choice on steroids can dramatically increase vehicular traffic for school attendance even in a highly walkable neighborhood and as the school age population simultaneously plummets.

When I was a kid nearly every K - 8 student walked either to a neighborhood public school or to the parish Catholic school. School buses where a fairly uncommon sight and were only used to transport the small number of kids who attended private school. Driving your kids to school wasn’t a thing. Now thanks to within district choice, citywide selective admission public schools, charters and vouchers most kids in the neighborhood have to be transported to school because they don’t attend school in the neighborhood. In fact there is no longer a zoned middle school for the neighborhood.

Similarly a large portion of the kids who attend the schools in the neighborhood live elsewhere. And despite the fact that there are significantly fewer children in the neighborhood there are more schools located in it than when I was a kid because several charters have opened. The net result is a lot more school buses roaming the neighborhood and many more parents driving their kids to school.

Which brings me back to what I wrote earlier that this is a challenging problem to attempt to resolve because the public has conflicting goals. They don’t want to pay more for school transport expenses, some want increased school options, most parents want lots of after school activities for their kids, many are opposed to higher housing density and they want less traffic congestion.