Found out bus to aftercare from our elementary school is being cut, who would you contact?

[Anonymous]

My next step would be to get a small group of parents together -- people you can expect to be even-tempered in a meeting -- and ask the principal for a meeting. The goal of the meeting would be to ask the principal:

1. Who made this decision?
2. What is the reason for it?
3. What is the next level above the level the decision was made at? (This is where you would direct your appeal.)

Also, by transportation department, did you contact the bus depot or the central administration? What did they give as the reason for the cut?

[Anonymous]

Do you have an active PTA? They may be able to help work with the principal. You and other parents need to be willing to do some of the foot work and not just expect the PTA to take care of it for you (or they will get snippy). If you contact them with.we're willing to do the work but we're not sure how to go about it they should help as this is would be an issue for many members.

[Anonymous]

Don't rely on the PTA. They will just tell you what the principal wants them to tell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't rely on the PTA. They will just tell you what the principal wants them to tell you.

They might. Or they might not. And there's only one way to find out for sure!

[Anonymous]

Definately talk with the after-care provider. They should be on top of this and be working on a plan to get kids to their location.

[Anonymous]

Talk to the new ESL teacher that will probably be starting next year on that transportation money. Gotta cut somewhere to pay for the ever increasing immigrants. Our school cut transportation 3 years ago and 4/5th grade band teacher last year. ESL teacher have increased from 1.0 to 2.5 in the last 3 years. Coincidence?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Talk to the new ESL teacher that will probably be starting next year on that transportation money. Gotta cut somewhere to pay for the ever increasing immigrants. Our school cut transportation 3 years ago and 4/5th grade band teacher last year. ESL teacher have increased from 1.0 to 2.5 in the last 3 years. Coincidence?

Meanwhile, back to suggestions for the OP that are actually helpful.

[Anonymous]

We are in a similar situation (except in our case it's because onsite aftercare is full) and we talked to other aftercare providers near us and were told that if we got 4+ kids together and paid an extra supplement for a bus we could get them on an MCPS bus to the offsite aftercare. We are still working on this so I'm wondering if anyone can tell us how much you pay for this??

Anonymous wrote:Definitely talk with aftercare. At ours, 3-4 parents paid for a MCPS bus to make an afternoon dropoff. I was not sure how it offically worked, but we paid the daycare an extra amount that was passed on to MCPS. They way I understand it, we were paying for the extension of an existing route.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My next step would be to get a small group of parents together -- people you can expect to be even-tempered in a meeting -- and ask the principal for a meeting. The goal of the meeting would be to ask the principal:

1. Who made this decision?
2. What is the reason for it?
3. What is the next level above the level the decision was made at? (This is where you would direct your appeal.)

Also, by transportation department, did you contact the bus depot or the central administration? What did they give as the reason for the cut?

OP here, we've contacted multiple people at the transportation office, depot as well as head of transportation.

I like this direct approach of finding out who, why, and how to appeal it and getting people to meet. I would just have to work on the even- tempered part

Thx.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Talk to the new ESL teacher that will probably be starting next year on that transportation money. Gotta cut somewhere to pay for the ever increasing immigrants. Our school cut transportation 3 years ago and 4/5th grade band teacher last year. ESL teacher have increased from 1.0 to 2.5 in the last 3 years. Coincidence?

Sucks that this is true

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in a similar situation (except in our case it's because onsite aftercare is full) and we talked to other aftercare providers near us and were told that if we got 4+ kids together and paid an extra supplement for a bus we could get them on an MCPS bus to the offsite aftercare. We are still working on this so I'm wondering if anyone can tell us how much you pay for this??

Anonymous wrote:Definitely talk with aftercare. At ours, 3-4 parents paid for a MCPS bus to make an afternoon dropoff. I was not sure how it offically worked, but we paid the daycare an extra amount that was passed on to MCPS. They way I understand it, we were paying for the extension of an existing route.

This was a 3 years ago but I recall it was calculated by distance/mileage. I would have to pull some old records but I remember we paid about $400 every 3 months as a supplement to the aftercare for 1 kid and a route extension of 1 mile. We did not pay MCPS directly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Talk to the new ESL teacher that will probably be starting next year on that transportation money. Gotta cut somewhere to pay for the ever increasing immigrants. Our school cut transportation 3 years ago and 4/5th grade band teacher last year. ESL teacher have increased from 1.0 to 2.5 in the last 3 years. Coincidence?

Sucks that this is true

Just straight up IGNORANT!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Talk to the new ESL teacher that will probably be starting next year on that transportation money. Gotta cut somewhere to pay for the ever increasing immigrants. Our school cut transportation 3 years ago and 4/5th grade band teacher last year. ESL teacher have increased from 1.0 to 2.5 in the last 3 years. Coincidence?

Sucks that this is true

Sucks that the same people that would complain about an increase in ESL services are probably those that are pushing for tracking and complaining about 2.0. Apparently when kids are below grade level they are contagious, but heaven forbid we provide services to help them catch up and help teachers meet their needs while still having time to teach students with more skills.

[Anonymous]

I haven't heard that the OP has talked to the aftercare.

This is the aftercare's responsibility to fix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My next step would be to get a small group of parents together -- people you can expect to be even-tempered in a meeting -- and ask the principal for a meeting. The goal of the meeting would be to ask the principal:

1. Who made this decision?
2. What is the reason for it?
3. What is the next level above the level the decision was made at? (This is where you would direct your appeal.)

Also, by transportation department, did you contact the bus depot or the central administration? What did they give as the reason for the cut?

OP here, we've contacted multiple people at the transportation office, depot as well as head of transportation.

I like this direct approach of finding out who, why, and how to appeal it and getting people to meet. I would just have to work on the even- tempered part

Thx.

Have you had a conversation with the aftercare providers?