Anonymous wrote:

It's great to say "neighborhood schools should require no buses, and if everyone just attended theirs, we'd have no transportation problems" when nearly half of the public-school student body is enrolled in citywide charters. One out of every two students has to commute somewhere, most likely farther than that student's neighborhood school. It'd be nice if DC actually gave some thought to planning bus routes that would better serve something like half the families in the public school system.

This.

We go to a neighborhood school now. A few times a year they make a huge show of having the kids walk or bike to school--usually from pre-designated areas that they are driven to and dropped off. The rest of the year the parents complain about parking. This school is on major express bus routes, and is in a walkable, low-traffic area--so it doesn't even have half the issues these five charters do. And yet... on the topic of having neighborhood kids actually walk to school every day, there is strange apathy. I understand how impossible it would be to have more than one drop off, have a work deadline, and incorporate a bus ride out of the way into a morning commute vs. a fifteen minute drive... I really do. And yet, the current system doesn't really work either. Those five charter schools with no crossing guards are an accident waiting to happen.

It's great to say "neighborhood schools should require no buses, and if everyone just attended theirs, we'd have no transportation problems" when nearly half of the public-school student body is enrolled in citywide charters. One out of every two students has to commute somewhere, most likely farther than that student's neighborhood school. It'd be nice if DC actually gave some thought to planning bus routes that would better serve something like half the families in the public school system.

Anonymous wrote:I'm also not talking about three year olds. Putting three year olds on a school bus is impractical--at best. In New York, we turned down a G&T spot that was nine miles from our house because I didn't want to put our kid on a bus at five to go that kind of distance. At three, I get it. You either go to your local school, or you drive or take transit. Fair enough.

But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

Again, city existing public transportation should be arranged to accommodate options to existing schools. We looked at several charters--and discovered that for many of them there was no reliable, close, and safe bus stop. Nor do the buses connect--if you have to take more than one, you might be waiting 30 minutes for each one. A trip that is less than 2 miles from our house (with no bike lanes--I checked for that too) becomes an epic, four-mile long bus ride, taking two or three buses, or taking the metro too (which adds to the cost enough to make it equivalent to taking Uber.) Or, we have to walk about a mile of it. I'm not opposed to that... but it's somewhat weather-dependent, and it's not a good walk. Busy intersections, heavy traffic.

What shocks me the most is, the charter is one of five charter schools in the immediate area. That's a lot of kids being picked up and dropped off by car. Having crossing guards (they don't). Having a bus that runs directly from the metro to that area (the only bus that runs consistently, not just for rush hour, is about four blocks away--again, with no crossing guards, several complicated intersections, heavy traffic.... And so on.

Anonymous wrote:I'm also not talking about three year olds. Putting three year olds on a school bus is impractical--at best. In New York, we turned down a G&T spot that was nine miles from our house because I didn't want to put our kid on a bus at five to go that kind of distance. At three, I get it. You either go to your local school, or you drive or take transit. Fair enough.

But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

Again, city existing public transportation should be arranged to accommodate options to existing schools. We looked at several charters--and discovered that for many of them there was no reliable, close, and safe bus stop. Nor do the buses connect--if you have to take more than one, you might be waiting 30 minutes for each one. A trip that is less than 2 miles from our house (with no bike lanes--I checked for that too) becomes an epic, four-mile long bus ride, taking two or three buses, or taking the metro too (which adds to the cost enough to make it equivalent to taking Uber.) Or, we have to walk about a mile of it. I'm not opposed to that... but it's somewhat weather-dependent, and it's not a good walk. Busy intersections, heavy traffic.

What shocks me the most is, the charter is one of five charter schools in the immediate area. That's a lot of kids being picked up and dropped off by car. Having crossing guards (they don't). Having a bus that runs directly from the metro to that area (the only bus that runs consistently, not just for rush hour, is about four blocks away--again, with no crossing guards, several complicated intersections, heavy traffic.... And so on.

Anonymous wrote: But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

My own IB is .6 miles away. Walkable, sure, but something with wheels is more practical.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NYC PP here.

I agree. All kids should be able to walk to a good in-bound school. But all cannot.

It's called WMATA

If your WMATA provided bus connections that were timed to connect with other busses, and had routes that ran within a block or two of every school, this would be great. But one thing I found when researching school options was a corner of NE that has about five charter schools in it (drawing kids from all over the city), and two bus lines, both of which have limited schedules and don't even come that close to the schools. Compound this with heavily trafficked streets and no crossing guards... because this area also has all of that.

New York has a fairly complicated formula that determines its bus routes, and who is eligible to use them. If you have to travel out of your borough, you either do a private bus or take the subway. But if you're more than a mile from a school and less than five miles from a school, a bus route has to accommodate you. If New York can work this out, I really don't see why DC cannot. Or cannot provide some kind of transit route that runs close to all of its schools.

However, as I said, apparently parking lots are a bigger priority.

So NYC has bus system to transport all kids that want to go to different boroughs to hundreds of different schools?

New poster, also from New York.

NYC poster, thank you for pointing this out. I love how the solution to the carless family is to just buy a car. Everyone here pretends they're so green yet sits in clogged traffic to get to school. And if you want the "free" PK3, you're stuck going to a terrible part of town, sitting in traffic for hours. There is laughably bad city planning in DC.