LowellDeeds

The Sunday Boston Globe had two related stories about busing and neighborhood schools. Comparing two Boston elementary schools, the stories compared the pros and cons of the two school assignment models. The way these stories were written, the neighborhood school seemed much better than the school attended by students who all arrived by bus. The busing story highlighted problems with buses arriving on time and drivers disputing which children were to get on the bus. In contrast, the neighborhood school spoke of the benefits of having 90% of the parents waiting at the front door each day at dismissal. This allowed teachers to hold impromptu conferences and get to know the parents better. No one would argue that when a parent has the flexibility to bring a child to and from school each day, the child benefits. But the reality is that most children come from households where both parents (or the one parent in a single parent household) work and work schedules rarely coincide with arrival and dismissal times of a child's school. For many, putting a child on the bus and having that same bus deliver that child to a day care provider in the afternoon is a big help schedule-wise. Busing is no bargain - the millions of dollars spent on transportation could certainly be used elsewhere. But for many, the nostalgic longing for "neighborhood schools" is a search for a world that doesn't exist anymore. For working families, a more useful discussion would involve before school and after school care and activities that would serve as affordable, safe and productive substitutes for expensive day care and stressful juggling of parental schedules to accommodate school start and end times.