Reply to The Gap Between Three APS High Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Again I will ask why middle schoolers cannot ride ART?[/quote]

First, there isn't sufficient ART bus coverage to take kids to middle school, so Arlington County would instead have to invest money in dramatically expanded ART bus service (would you like higher taxes or fewer services to cover that?). If you look, for example, at Nottingham-zone kids (because we know how much you love to hate them) who would be bused to Kenmore instead of being able to walk a short distance to Williamsburg, they'd have to pick up their first of two ART buses before 6:30 am to get to Kenmore on time. At the end of the school day, if they really hustle after the bell and can get all of their stuff together and get to the ART bus stop in 12 minutes, they'll get home only a little less than an hour after school ends. If they miss that bus and have to wait for the next one, they get home a full two hours after school ends. Would you be willing to subject your child to upwards of three house of busing every day instead of 20 minutes of walking (30 if they take their time or stop to wait for a friend)? I doubt it, I imagine that would be something you think other people's kids should do.

Second, liability. If kids aren't within the walk zone and APS tells them to get on ART buses rather than providing school bus transportation and a child gets injured or disappears during their school transit, APS will get nailed for failing to provide safe transit to school. Because not all of these lines connect, you'll have kids walking a half mile or more along/across busy streets to reduce time spent on buses, which is just asking for someone to get hit by a car (especially in the winter when it will still be dark while they walk).[/quote]

Not PP, but really I think the county NEEDS to invest more in transportation infrastructure even if it means higher taxes, because we're just too dense and too urban to pretend like we're the sleepy suburb of yesteryear. MS kids are old enough to use public transportation by themselves safely, if we had a more robust transit network. There's no reason why the special snowflakes of NOVA must be driven door-to-door. NONE. There are students in Switzerland and Germany who ride public buses [b]alone[/b] to Kindergarten. If our kids can't handle that by 6th grade, they deserve to fail. So much for American exceptionalism. [/quote]

Then take up that issue with the proper entity, which is the county board, not the school board (and definitely not your neighbors who don't want to put their kids on buses for 2-3 hours a day). Unless/until the county board decides to invest in expanding public transit around Arlington to allow students to take public transit to school, the school board can only work with the current system, which doesn't allow for students to take public transit to school on a widespread basis.[/quote]

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