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Hi! We're looking at moving to the suburbs and it seems like so many towns don't provide schools buses...seems like the concept of two working, commuting parents is a novel idea....
In any case, do you know of any northern NJ towns (with trains) that provide school busing for kids within 1 mile or more, and/or have good early care/after care options (even ones you can pay for)?
A lot of NJ downs are both small and densely populated so the schools are mostly walking distance. As for before and after care, I’m sure all towns have centers that offer that. You should probably narrow your search a bit more to get more meaningful answers.
Montclair, South Orange, Maplewood, Glen Ridge, Summit, and Ridgewood. Westfield was cut due to no school buses for anyone I believe?, bad transportation options to the city and half day pre-k.
The NJ bus regulations for school provided bus tansport are more than 2 miles for k-8 and more than 2.5 miles for 9-12. The measurement is the shortest distance on public roads/walkways.
You need to call the individual town school systems to get answers about before care and after care. When we moved out of NYC one of the towns we liked did not have before care/after care. We crossed it off our list of towns.
Fair point haha. looking at the following towns:
Westfield was cut due to no school buses for anyone I believe?, bad transportation options to the city and half day pre-k.
Just to clarify:
1) Westfield and all towns have school bus for students that live further than X miles from school (where X depends on what level of school), but since it is a small town in size, very few students live far enough to get rides in Westfield, but some do.
2) If you are both working, I do not see how the school bus will help you since you need before school and after school care anyway and they will take care of getting your kids to school (and in Westfield, most of this is in the school itself)
3) Westfield has great options into the city. One of the few places where you can take the NJ bus or NJ train from the same stop. Most people working in midtown and work early, take the bus into the city (45 minutes) and the train home (train ticket works for both). If you work downtown, the train goes to Newark and the path is across the platform. I work in Brookfield Plaza, can leave my desk at 5:03pm and be at the Westfield train station at 5:51pm
The only issue is that you have to transfer trains to midtown, BUT in the morning MOST (not all) trains stop on track 1 where you get the train into the city.
Also, there is an express train from Newark to Westfield that is only 15 minutes. I use to work in times square, could leave work at 5pm, and be at the Westfield train station at 5:51pm. Granted it was subway to train to train, but it was NOT like I had to sprint to change trains, unless one was running late.
4) as for 1/2 pre-k, Westfield has NO pre-K. It has 1/2 kindergarten, but again, if you need pre-care and after care, free full-day kindergarten + precare + after care is about the same price as private kindergarten (and the private schools have a later pick up time). But with the westfield setup, you can drop your kid off at school at 7am (but the bus does not pick up that early) and pick them up at 6pm (again, the bus doesnt run that late)
Montclair, South Orange, Maplewood, Glen Ridge, Summit, and Ridgewood. Westfield was cut due to no school buses for anyone I believe?, bad transportation options to the city and half day pre-k.
Here are the details for Maplewood/South Orange with the specific addresses that are eligible for bus service. As others have mentioned, many of these NNJ towns are geographically too small to be required to provide school bus service.
The 2-mile rule went into effect around 1965. I took a bus to school in first grade, but after that there were no more buses. We lived a mile from the school. The town is 1.3 square miles, so NOBODY lived 2 miles from school. So, we walked. Kept us skinny.
School bus did not stop on or near our street. I drove the kid to school every day until he got his license. Waiting in traffic to drop him off sucked but I got to spend time with him .
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