If you keep up with current events, you have no doubt read or heard about the fiasco of Louisville's first day of school for the JCPS. I really don't have a dog in this fight but as a mother, grandmother, great grandmother, citizen of Louisville, former teacher in private schools, a lover of children and a person with common sense and wisdom, I have much to say about what transpired on opening day.
There has never been a reasonable explanation for the current superintendent's desire to deviate from the rest of the country's decision to recognize the fact that 'busing' as we know it is no longer needed in this city or for most other cities in the U.S. I'm sure that when the results of the census are finally tabulated it will show that cities the size of Louisville are gradually becoming more and more diverse.
If you were to visit each home on my street you would meet, a Japanese/American couple, a Caucasian/African American couple, with three African American children, an Hispanic couple, three or four Jewish couples, three or four Catholic couples, a Baptist/Catholic couple, a number of Protestant couples a Mid-Eastern couple, and an African American. That is just one street. Diversity is evident if you shop at the small group of stores at one of the intersections. We have a Mediterranean restaurant, a great Mexican restaurant, a Chinese Restaurant and a Mexican grocery store, a Greek Church, Catholic Church, Methodist Church a Baptist Church. Do you think we need to put our five year old children on a bus and drive them for one or more hours so that they can see people that are not just like them?
There are so many things wrong with the plan that was foisted upon the Louisville people that I have a hard time knowing just where to begin to list them. Under the guise of keeping 'what is best for the children' in mind it was decided that if the youngest among them were to be exposed to other cultures and children with different skin color they would grow to be more accepting of those "people" as they grew older. What hog wash! The method by which they are going to accomplish this fete is to put the kindergarten children on buses and drive them through morning rush hour traffic across town or down town at 7:30 in the morning so that they can mingle with children that do not live in their neighborhoods.
School begins at 9:00 A M and the children have to get an early start because it sometimes takes one or one and a half hours to get to their destination. Remember these are five year old children! ( Are we there yet?) They have their lunch at 11:00 or 11;30 and then at 3:45 they are back on the buses and headed for home. Even under the best conditions they will not reach home until 5:30 or there-about. There is a great effort being made to get them all home by 6:30PM. They boarded the bus at 7:30 and arrive back home TEN hours later. Mom and Dad were probably gone from their home about eight or nine hours max to complete their day's work. The children have six hours of instruction, one half hour for lunch and three hours, (if all goes well) of bus riding. Tell me how this can possibly be a good thing.
Last year there were so many complaints because the children that averaged so much more than three hours on the buses that the decision makers though it would be solved if they bought more buses, so they spent SIX MILLION dollars buying more buses so that they could have more buses on the road to expedite the riders thereby getting them home quicker.
The first day of school they aimed to get all the children home by six o'clock, (remember they got on the buses at 7:30 AM) but the gods were not kind to them. Some of the kids did not get home until 7 or 7;30. Some of them did not get home until 9 PM!!! The HIIC *said they did pretty well because ONLY 200 children got home after 6:30. (There seems to be a slight controversy about whether it was 200 or 400.) One little girl was still on the bus at 9:00 and they had no idea who she was! Her parents were frantic and had other relatives stationed at various bus stops trying to find her. One parent became so frantic that she called the police!
Five year old kindergartners!! Imagine the trauma they will probably be dealing with for years! Why is it allowed to continue? I enquired as to whether there were monitors on the buses. No! How is the bus driver supposed to deal with a bus load of 5 year old children and drive in morning and late afternoon traffic? What if one of them throw up, fall off the seat, get a scratch,a bumped head or get in a fracas with another child? Have you heard about bullying? A great percentage of it happens on the school bus. It is so appalling and so senseless, how can it be stopped?
Why doesn't each bus have at least one monitor with a clip board listing the name, address and phone number of each and every child. A child of that age should not be expected to have all of that information readily handy. This may surprise some of you but children have been known to lose their name-tags, lanyards, and many other possessions.
The HIIC* has answered all complaints by saying how much the schools have improved and boasts of the new programs and so on. Never mind that we spent an added six million dollars to support a failed venture. Law suits have been filed and lost, there's been an exodus of students that are being enrolled in private schools but still the pleas fall on deaf ears. Some one, please explain this to me! I'm baffled! Caio
*Head Idiot In Charge
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