Our Tax Dollars at Work

We recently became aware, quite by accident, that our local school district has radically changed their bus routes on us. With frustration and dismay we learned that D1 will no longer be picked up in front of our house - his bus will make a stop instead at the middle school over 8 blocks away - and D3 now has no bus to ride at all!

OK, so our kids do attend private schools some distance out of our local school district, and we were fortunate that they ever had bus rides at all. But the manner in which these changes were communicated leaves much to be desired. Well, actually everything to be desired - they never told us!

It was my wife who discovered the mess. Because she is such the consummate scheduler, she contacted our school district's transportation office more than a month ago to ask how soon we could hope to learn what the bus schedule might be for the upcoming school year. The courteous yet unhelpful government employee at the other end of the phone seemed to think that there were no buses for us this year, and if so we should have received a communication stating as such by now. A transferred phone call later, and the news was mostly confirmed: No bus for D3, and a really ugly schedule for D1. Also, we were promised a copy of the communication as we apparently had somehow not receive it as we should have.

This really got my wife in a lather - and boy did I hear about it! Now, I can be just as hot headed as she, but most of the time I jump into problem solving mode and effectively bypass the emotional responses she so often has. This was the case here - and as usual, that was also the wrong response on my part, for she just thought I was being insensitive.. . . Anyway, that's another story.

So I decided I would relieve her of the frustration and run the gauntlet myself to find out what I could do to get to the bottom of this fiasco, and to make the situation as workable as possible. I'll spare you the ugly details, but suffice it to say it took several phone calls to learn the following:

• Communications about the bus changes were e-mailed to the Schools affected, not the families affected.
• The principal at D1s school (who answered her own phone when I called - I like that!) said she remembered forwarding the mail to one of her secretaries - who never contacted us, as the assumption was that they were only being copied as a curtesey. They believed we would have been contacted directly. (As we should have!)
  
• There were not enough kids on the route to D3s school and so it was cut to save money. This despite the fact that we just voted in a tax increase for the school district.
• Because there is no school bus alternitive, we can apply for a credit from the state to offset our additional expenses due to having to drive our daughter to school.
  
• Before school care for D3 is 20 dollars a week. This is at her school - and there was an opening - thank goodness.
  
• D1s bus route has been combined with another route to his school. Due to state laws limiting the amount of time children may be on a bus, there would be centralized pickup locations so the route would be quick enough to conform to the law. D1 would have to be at the centralized location - 8 blocks away- at 6:50 AM
• It's too late for D1 to apply for an assigned parking spot at school. As a Junior he probably would not have received one anyway without a carpool arrangement. I called the teacher in charge of the parking spot assignments to see what could be done - my message has yet to be returned.

Such a shining example of our local school district's bureaucracy.

We have yet to iron out a final transportation schedule but it looks like we are back in the school transportation business for a while. . .