EcoNuke points out that the City Schools of Decatur has posted the bus schedules for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year on its website.
Based on the recently approved bell schedule, all Pre-K, K-3 and Decatur High School bus routes will start at approximately 6:50am and arrive at their destination at 7:30a now. Fifth Avenue 4/5 Academy and Renfroe routes will begin at 7:45a and end at 8:15a.
Specific routes for each school can be found on CSD’s new Transportation website.
Also according to the CSD website, buses will be doing “dry runs” today. The site reiterates that the CSD “walk radius” around each school is one mile – meaning there’s no bus pickup within a mile of each school – and that bus routes are subject to change based on ridership. Changes to routes will be posted on the CSD website.
Now I know exactly what time the fake residents will be waiting at the curb outside my son’s window.
I’m surprised I need to be the one to ask for elaboration, but here it goes…
“Heeehhhh?”
I live on the edge, of town and life. Har, har. As a result, I’ve seen many curious things. When I first bought my house nearly 9 years ago, not sure if that makes me old Decatur or new, probably ‘New’, I was shocked at the influx of cars at 7AM dropping kids off at the bus stop. One morning, I counted eleven cars. I’m naive so I thought to myself, ‘why the hell would you wait here for the bus when the school is less than .4 miles away?’
A couple of months later the AJC did a story on how CSD was attempting to cut down on the number of nonresidents in the system. I’d go out to my porch and write down license plate numbers while sipping my morning joe and provide them to CSD. The influx went down over the years but even last year there was 3 per morning. How many will show up this year?
Folks- please continue to report people you see doing this. I even suggest you take a picture of the student (hey- from what I understand, if someone’s in public you can take their picture legally) and take it to the appropriate school. You can probably guesstimate the age of the student and find the right school; after all there is just one school for each age range after 3rd grade.
The beginning of the school year is a great time to nip this in the bud!
Thank you DM! (My hero!)
Why do so many buses stop less than a 1/2 mile from the school when the policy states nobody gets picked up within a mile of the school?
I know…. We were .9 miles from Oakhurst last year and had no bus service. Now we are a little over 1/2 mile from Winnona and suddenly have bus service.
The supervisor has indicated that this year she was more generous with the definition of “one mile”
Yeah… but 1/2 mile is nowhere near a mile.
Just me or are all the links broken, including on the CSD site? Do these updated lists now include the PM routes? Earlier pdfs did not.
They don’t post the p.m. route. I can’t remember if the p.m. route is in reverse or the same as a.m. I know, not helpful–sorry!
I’ve alway found it odd that they never post the PM routes since parents of little ones who have to be met at the bus stop must be prepared to be there at the correct time. Of course the time will vary and occasionally the bus is real late because of some kind of logistical problem but a ballpark time would be nice instead of figuring it out by trial and error.
All of the times, morning or otherwise, are not written in stone because the routes will be adjusted depending on the ridership and the reality of the traffic. (E.g. getting across the tracks from Michigan to Fifth Avenue School in 5 minutes doesn’t seem quite realistic.) But you’ll never see an update posted; again you’re supposed to intuit it by getting the feel of when the bus actually comes. It would be nice to have documentation. It’s always disconcerting when one calls to report a bus that’s 1/2 hour late compared to usual to hear that one just did not understand the unpublished altered schedule. But unless things change this year–and already the schedules are much clearer than in previous years so maybe communication is improving in the Transportation Dept., the original schedule will be the one posted all year, no matter how much it evolves or is actively changed.
Dang it. They took them down. What the heck?
Is this the page you are looking for?:
http://www.csdecatur.net/transportation/
Oh, they are back to those old style schedules with numbers of students, no more cute bus schedules. The numbers of students on our routes look a little more closely related to reality than they have been in the past. The links for Routes 84 and 86 aren’t working right now. Maybe someone is fixing the part where the bus becomes a helicopter and flies over the tracks from Michigan to Fifth Avenue School in 5 minutes.
For those freaked out to see 111 students on one high school bus: Don’t worry. That probably just reflects the residence pattern of high schoolers. Few actually take the bus, probably even fewer this year since they would have to get on it so early. Most walk to school.
Can someone explain to me why this is a bad idea.
CSD purchases it’s own, smaller buses. (From John Ahmann’s analysis of our leasing contract with DeKalb it seems that this may be a good idea anyway). Then the city coordinates with CSD to use them as the Decatur circular shuttle.
Not sure what to do with them during school pickup/drop-off, but I thought I’d throw it out there – again!
Sounds like a wonderful idea to me. As I’m taking the bus/shuttle over to Oakhurst Market, the bus driver can let me know that my offspring was acting up on the bus yesterday or always seems to desperately be finishing their homework on the way to school. But I’m not known for having business sense.
I still haven’t filled out a transportation form for my rising 4/5er, because they were never sent home with these kids. So they actually don’t know yet that my 4th grader will be riding the bus. Not until they get the form next week when I fill it out at open house. Much will change about these schedules, I’m sure.
This is making me a little crazy because if you didn’t get one, we probably didn’t either. I faithfully fill those things out, year after year after year, per child, so there’s no way I would notice if I didn’t get one. It always feels like I just filled one out.
On the other hand, there’s some pretty darn assertive little girls at our bus stop, on the list or not. I doubt a school bus could get by them if they wanted to board!
Link to “form” anyone?? We’ve never been a bus rider before but plan to have our student ride it to 5th Ave from day 1 (walk, bike, or drive, you are crazy!) –are you reejected without “the form”?!
The link to the form in this post isn’t working right this second. But go to the CSD website, then to Departments, then to Transportation and you’ll find it. Or cut and paste “http://www.csdecatur.net/transportation/” into your Internet address bar.
You can hand the form in at the school during working hours this week, or at any open house. I don’t know what happens if your child’s form isn’t submitted because I’m paranoid and fax it, hand it in, put it in my child’s backpack, and tape it to the forehead. After having a child lost in bus transportation once in preK and once in First Grade, I spare no effort to make sure that I appease the gods of Bus Transportation. As far as I can see, the purpose of the form is to protect DeKalb Transportation in terms of liability. When buses are late or my child is lost, no one has used the form to call. I’ve tried to make suggestions in the past about how the form could be used to indicate important information like whether your 4-7 year old should be allowed to get off the bus if no parent is waiting, etc., but the gods of transportation do not like suggestions. Now I just send them sacrifices of lots of bus forms.
That’s interesting, because at the preK parent orientation, the transportation director told us that the drivers would not release a child if no parent was waiting at the stop and would transport the child back to the school, at which time we would be notified by phone. She also indicated that it needed to be the *same* parent or adult meeting the child and if, for example, the other parent decided to meet the bus one day that the driver would probably not release the child. (She did indicate an exception for parents sharing custody when an explicit arrangement and schedule is communicated to the system ahead of time.)
Is this consistent with what you were told and then it didn’t happen, karass? Or could it be that the transportation gods have indeed been listening?
Again, this was concerning the preK students. I don’t think it’s meant to apply all the way K-12.
It’s very possible that the gods listened. I know for a fact that it happened again after our examples some years ago and I suspect that it happened to folks who got angrier than I did. I so adored the bus driver involved that I was more interested in systematic ways to prevent it happening again than truly angry. The gods probably listen to loud and angry more than enthusiastic suggestions.
Oh and I should add that I am not sure that a 5- or 6-year old kindergartener or first-grader should be walking home alone from certain bus stops, any more than a preKer should, especially if no siblings or neighbors get off with them.
I agree! My comment was meant to indicate that I wasn’t sure parents of older children could expect the same since it was communicated in a meeting for parents of 4-year-olds. I filled out a form, but am still on the fence as to whether my kid will be riding.
What’s the Weschester bus schedule? I must have missed it.
I don’t care as long as the buses don’t park on the LAWN! Just in case some of the sprinklers have survived the car parking!
Every day I get in the queue (too much, the magic bus)
To get on the bus that takes me to you (too much, the magic bus)
I’m so nervous, I just sit and smile (too much, the magic bus)
Your house is only another mile (too much, the magic bus)
Thank you, driver, for getting me here (too much, the magic bus)
You’ll be an inspector, have no fear (too much, the magic bus)
I don’t want to cause no fuss (too much, the magic bus)
But can I buy your magic bus? (too much, the magic bus)
According to the letter that arrived today, none of the K-3 crowd will be on buses – so no worries about little ones getting left behind.
On the other hand, my suspicions about the high school’s early bell schedules have been reawakened. If we don’t need the buses for K-3, why does the high school have to start at 8am? It’s the football, isn’t it?
Actually the K-3 schools seem to have one bus route each (and Glennwood two). At the end of May we got a does qualify for bus for one child and a does not qualify for the other child (yes they live at the same address all the time). I checked to confirm with transportation whether we qualified or not. I checked google maps and door to door by the shortest route is exactly 1 mile. Since the closest stop will be the last stop before Glennwood we are going to try bus in the morning and afternoon. In the past the WP bus schedule was just too early for out night owls. Because our now rising 3rd grader has been a part-time Animal Cracker participant since K there have been a few mix-ups. Once when I wasn’t at the bus stop because it was an AC day the bus driver drove round to our house and let our child off the bus to check if someone was home. The bus driver confirmed that had someone not been home he would have our child back to school. My general experience is that the bus drivers will not let children off the bus unless you are there or have left instructions authorizing alternative pick-up. Over the last three years we have more times where child went to AC instead of getting on the bus ( a testament to AC mostly – even if nerve wracking for parent). I have seen 4/5 graders get off bus and walk home OB own.
I guess it’s the football. Or another sport. But even many of the football parents and players are against it. And it’s a problem for the 8th graders who play on the high school team.
I really don’t get it. Sometimes I don’t agree with a decision but usually I at least understand why someone else wanted it. Maybe someone just made up their mind and refuses to change it.
I hope the tutoring that used to go on in the morning really does get shifted to the afternoon. No word on that yet.
Why blame Football when there are 13 other sports teams?
Baseball
Basketball
Cheerleading
Cross Country
Golf
Lacrosse
Soccer
Softball
Swimming
Tennis
Track & Field
Volleyball
Wrestling
ok. so forget these schedules, just heard from a former CSD employee that they have a new bus schedule out that no one really knows about. Go check the new schedule. So over CSD and their wishy washiness. Now we won’t be taking the bus in the mornings.
Uh oh. There seems to be some errors in the new schedules. Entire streets are left off of the Fifth Avenue 4/5 Schedule and Route 86 is posted twice, once under the appropriate heading of “Route 86” but then again under “Route 84”. Hopefully, the missing Route 84 that is not posted has all those missing streets.
I’d recommend that Fifth Avenue parents check the new schedules on the CSD website and see whether their stops are listed. If not, email CSD so they’ll know about the omissions and can fix them in time for the bus!
Didn’t realize entire areas were missing.! Guess I was too busy being bummed that now were an early stop. It’s a good recommendation you have but a) not our responsibility and b) we don’t have a means of recommending when we don’t have access to all FAVE parents. CSD has communication issues. I used to think it was Bruce Roaden’s lack of proper communication strategy but now he’s not over communications and they still have issues so it makes me think it’s higher up. We are 3 days from school starting. This stuff should be worked out and not half baked.