Do we want schools to educate, or to just be babysitters?
Friday, August 17. 2012
There’s little argument that the Barrow County School System botched its handling of a proposal to cut its bus service to some 550 middle and high school students living close to their schools. There was no clear communication from the school to the affected families and no communications to local law enforcement officials about the changes. It was confusing.
With school set to start this week, the board of education last week reversed course on that plan and will provide bus transportation as it had in the past. Now, however, the system will have to come up with $350,000 to pay for that, money the BCSS doesn’t have.
The larger issue in all of this, however, is not that just the school system screwed up, but rather than we as a society expect it to cater to our every whim. If you want to see where America is headed, just look at the structure of public education in the country and the expectations we as a society have come to demand from it. There is no larger system of paternalism in America than its public education institutions.
We now have public Pre-K programs that are supposed to “prepare” youngsters for kindergarten, but in reality are little more than free childcare. Public schools are expected to pick children up in the mornings in a bus, take them to school, provide them with a free or cheap breakfast, check their physical, psychological and social needs and provide services for those, educate all children to be scholars, provide them with a happy and healthy lunch, give them special tutoring, babysit them in the after school hours or provide a long list of after school activities, and then give them a ride home in the afternoons.
And we want all of that with lower taxes.
The truth is, many parents look at schools as little more than tax-funded childcare. When schools close due to snow, many parents whine, “What am I going to do with my children?” When the Barrow County School System changed its school start times this year, some parents whined, “But I have to leave for work early, who will take care of my children?”
So it should have been no surprise to BCSS officials that any plan to reduce bus service would be met with the same kind of whining response. A lot of parents expect their child’s school to cater to their schedules, not the other way around.
But the fundamental question here is: Why should schools provide transportation at all? The use of school buses came into widespread use in rural areas during the Depression when cars were few. That isn’t the case today.
The BCSS spends over $5 million a year out of a $90 million budget to transport students. The 550 students who would have been affected by the system’s proposed bussing cuts are now going to cost taxpayers over $600 each this year so the parents of those kids don’t have to do it themselves.
So why not charge parents who demand bussing service a fee to cover the costs? Is it really the responsibility of taxpayers to provide transportation for families who don’t want to provide their own?
But if parents have become spoiled by this kind of thing, public schools have nobody to blame but themselves. For decades, public education leaders have oversold what they could do. They have portrayed public education as the solution to all of society’s problems and flaws. Any issue you want to discuss — race relations, child hunger, psychological problems, teen sex — school leaders have promised to deliver a solution.
Add to that, the mentality of many urban school officials has been that children are better off being “raised” by the school than by their own families. That’s probably true in some places, but the paternalistic attitude behind that view has infected public education into thinking it is superior to families in general. It isn’t.
Public school leaders are also to blame for the problems in the recent bus debate because most school systems have detached the building of new schools from being community-based institutions. Instead, school systems go out and buy rural farmland and locate schools away from established communities. But those rural areas have no sidewalks or other infrastructure to accommodate those new schools.
If school leaders want kids to be able to walk or bike to school, then they should build schools in established communities rather than in John’s cow pasture. That’s true in Barrow County, too.
It is this kind of top-down, paternalistic decision-making that has hurt the image of many public schools. A recent Journal online survey showed that some 56 percent of those responding had a “somewhat” or “very” negative view of the BCSS. Only 26 percent had a positive view of the system. That is very troubling, but not too surprising.
But if schools have invited problems, parents have welcomed the paternalism. If a parent chooses to live so far away from work that he can’t transport his child to or from school, then that problem should be on the parent to resolve, not the school system. In this era where cars are ubiquitous, there is no reason more parents shouldn’t take their children to school or form carpools. (Charge $1,000 a year for school bus service and see how quickly parents adapt.)
But it is the one-dimensional attitude of some parents that really chafes. Parents complained very loudly about the BCSS’ bussing changes not because it affected the quality of education of their child’s school, but because it would have been inconvenient for them to arrange an alternative. Yet not a single parent — not one — spoke at the school board meeting to demand the BCSS fix its ongoing problem of embarrassingly weak math instruction in the local high schools.
What does that say about parental priorities? Are we really interested in a quality education, or do we just want public schools to be a cradle-to-age-18 bussing and babysitting service?
Although the BCSS didn’t handle the bus issue well, the underlying problem really isn’t the system’s fault. More state funding cuts in addition to the collapse of the local tax digest has devastated the system’s revenues.
In proposing to cut nearby bus service, BCSS leaders were trying to cut expenses without making further cuts to school instruction, which has already been cut down this year to 160 days. In this funding crisis, leaders tried to pick cuts they thought wouldn’t impact instruction and for that, they cannot be faulted. It is very common in many school districts for parents who live within a mile or two of the school to provide their own transportation. What the BCSS proposed was not unheard of.
The reality is that school systems are changing what they do in response to the economic crisis, just like businesses have had to change. No institution is exempt from the economic downturn. We cannot expect the BCSS to spend money it doesn’t have and we cannot demand schools provide services for free when there is less money available.
Now the question is, what will the BCSS have to cut in order to make up that $350,000 being spent on bussing?
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
The larger issue in all of this, however, is not that just the school system screwed up, but rather than we as a society expect it to cater to our every whim. If you want to see where America is headed, just look at the structure of public education in the country and the expectations we as a society have come to demand from it. There is no larger system of paternalism in America than its public education institutions.
We now have public Pre-K programs that are supposed to “prepare” youngsters for kindergarten, but in reality are little more than free childcare. Public schools are expected to pick children up in the mornings in a bus, take them to school, provide them with a free or cheap breakfast, check their physical, psychological and social needs and provide services for those, educate all children to be scholars, provide them with a happy and healthy lunch, give them special tutoring, babysit them in the after school hours or provide a long list of after school activities, and then give them a ride home in the afternoons.
And we want all of that with lower taxes.
The truth is, many parents look at schools as little more than tax-funded childcare. When schools close due to snow, many parents whine, “What am I going to do with my children?” When the Barrow County School System changed its school start times this year, some parents whined, “But I have to leave for work early, who will take care of my children?”
So it should have been no surprise to BCSS officials that any plan to reduce bus service would be met with the same kind of whining response. A lot of parents expect their child’s school to cater to their schedules, not the other way around.
But the fundamental question here is: Why should schools provide transportation at all? The use of school buses came into widespread use in rural areas during the Depression when cars were few. That isn’t the case today.
The BCSS spends over $5 million a year out of a $90 million budget to transport students. The 550 students who would have been affected by the system’s proposed bussing cuts are now going to cost taxpayers over $600 each this year so the parents of those kids don’t have to do it themselves.
So why not charge parents who demand bussing service a fee to cover the costs? Is it really the responsibility of taxpayers to provide transportation for families who don’t want to provide their own?
But if parents have become spoiled by this kind of thing, public schools have nobody to blame but themselves. For decades, public education leaders have oversold what they could do. They have portrayed public education as the solution to all of society’s problems and flaws. Any issue you want to discuss — race relations, child hunger, psychological problems, teen sex — school leaders have promised to deliver a solution.
Add to that, the mentality of many urban school officials has been that children are better off being “raised” by the school than by their own families. That’s probably true in some places, but the paternalistic attitude behind that view has infected public education into thinking it is superior to families in general. It isn’t.
Public school leaders are also to blame for the problems in the recent bus debate because most school systems have detached the building of new schools from being community-based institutions. Instead, school systems go out and buy rural farmland and locate schools away from established communities. But those rural areas have no sidewalks or other infrastructure to accommodate those new schools.
If school leaders want kids to be able to walk or bike to school, then they should build schools in established communities rather than in John’s cow pasture. That’s true in Barrow County, too.
It is this kind of top-down, paternalistic decision-making that has hurt the image of many public schools. A recent Journal online survey showed that some 56 percent of those responding had a “somewhat” or “very” negative view of the BCSS. Only 26 percent had a positive view of the system. That is very troubling, but not too surprising.
But if schools have invited problems, parents have welcomed the paternalism. If a parent chooses to live so far away from work that he can’t transport his child to or from school, then that problem should be on the parent to resolve, not the school system. In this era where cars are ubiquitous, there is no reason more parents shouldn’t take their children to school or form carpools. (Charge $1,000 a year for school bus service and see how quickly parents adapt.)
But it is the one-dimensional attitude of some parents that really chafes. Parents complained very loudly about the BCSS’ bussing changes not because it affected the quality of education of their child’s school, but because it would have been inconvenient for them to arrange an alternative. Yet not a single parent — not one — spoke at the school board meeting to demand the BCSS fix its ongoing problem of embarrassingly weak math instruction in the local high schools.
What does that say about parental priorities? Are we really interested in a quality education, or do we just want public schools to be a cradle-to-age-18 bussing and babysitting service?
Although the BCSS didn’t handle the bus issue well, the underlying problem really isn’t the system’s fault. More state funding cuts in addition to the collapse of the local tax digest has devastated the system’s revenues.
In proposing to cut nearby bus service, BCSS leaders were trying to cut expenses without making further cuts to school instruction, which has already been cut down this year to 160 days. In this funding crisis, leaders tried to pick cuts they thought wouldn’t impact instruction and for that, they cannot be faulted. It is very common in many school districts for parents who live within a mile or two of the school to provide their own transportation. What the BCSS proposed was not unheard of.
The reality is that school systems are changing what they do in response to the economic crisis, just like businesses have had to change. No institution is exempt from the economic downturn. We cannot expect the BCSS to spend money it doesn’t have and we cannot demand schools provide services for free when there is less money available.
Now the question is, what will the BCSS have to cut in order to make up that $350,000 being spent on bussing?
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
To answer your other question, students must attend school for the time between their sixth and sixteenth birthdays. See section 20-2-690.1. It is known as the compulsory attendance law.
And honestly, did you bother to do any research yourself? These things are very easy to find.
"The law says those 16 and under must attend school. The law says the system must provide a way to get them there. There's really nothing more to talk about."
If you are, then you creating an argument that has nothing to do with the subject of the article. The article dealt with the re-establishing transportation within the 1.5 mile radius of the school. You are correct, children are required to be at school between the ages of 6 and 16 (By the way, don't try to be a grandstander about compulsory laws, I probably know more about them than you). But, the school district is not required to transport those students within a 1.5 mile radius of the school. This is evident in the law that you yourself (I assume) posted.
In reality your message I quoted is true, except for students that are within 1.5 miles of the school. That is what the school was going to do, and that was the subject of the article. You created an argument that has no significance to the topic and that is why I commented to make you aware of it.
"But the fundamental question here is: Why should schools provide transportation at all?"
Buffington made no reference to 1.5 mile radius.
Therefore the matter at issue here could be defined in a broader way than you choose to represent it.
And "grandstander?" Really? You sound bitter. I actually do know a great deal about school law. Maybe more than you, maybe not. Either way, I'm okay with that.
And I actually believe that parents SHOULD be responsible for getting their children, who live within 1.5 miles, to school. We probably agree on a great deal, but since you'd rather argue semantics, that would likely be overlooked. I was simply pointing one in the direction of the law that was mentioned. Nothing more, nothing less...
Creel is not a LEADER, she is a DICTATOR, with little genuine concern for the employees, students or parents of Barrow County. Our BOE gets to get a backbone and stop cowering before Creel.
Did you take some time to research the Lawful requirement of busing students to school before writing this article?
And under what Law are you basing your point to charge Parents for bus service?
How would you apply such a fee to people who cannot afford to pay this?
I think the first thing that should be looked at is the requirement for State funds provided for transportation of students to be completely separate of educational operating costs.
Have you compared what the State provided compared to the Busing service expenses?
If even $1 has been transferred into a different operating account, this would be a violation of State Law and could very well jeopardize future funding requests submitted to the State.
Lets first focus on the proper management of the our funds before jumping to a conclusion that we should just tell people to shut up and/or pay up.
Don't you think that would be the proper way forward?
I agree that school system does take a parental view on topics as well, but that is because a lot of parents don't care about anything their kids learn and the school system is trying to cover for their stupidity or lack of parental control. But when you have kids raising kids what do you expect.
I honestly don't understand what the griping about having kids within a couple miles of the school walk is about anyway. I encourage anyone to go out on Haymon Morris road and the surrounding roads in the afternoon and morning and look at what they see. They see a bunch of people lined up to get their kids. You can't tell me those people standing around are working and thus, can't start some sort of carpooling. Give me a break.
By the way, I think that argument that it is the legal responsibility to bus kids to school is a croc of !@#$. I have never seen a school taken to court for that reason. But hey, I could be wrong, maybe there is some outdated law about that. I wouldn't put it past the state of Georgia, or the continually over-extending federal government.
Good article though, Mike.
Attitudes like yours reek with wealth envy. Somebody take away your cookie when you were a kid. Is that why you are so bitter...afraid somebody is going to take away your free taxpaid cookie again?
Yes, the government owes you. Please raise my taxes to send people like you to South America permanently.
To the BOE. Switch the times back to the way they were last year and extend the day as needed to meet your prescious 160 day calendar.
Actually, all of us already pay a fee for this service. Look at your tax bill. We pay for schools and transportation. We pay roughly the same amounts every year for these services, however, the county can vary the quality of these services at will, every year, without consulting the people footing the bill. I paid roughly the same amount of tax I paid in previous years this last time around, but, for the first time in my child's school carreer, she's not being picked up by the school bus at our front door - the same school bus that's picked her up for the last 8 years.
OK, fine. So, I get up earlier and I drive my daughter up to the top of the subdivision to wait for the bus every morning. It's a minor inconvenience. However, I did pay for the service. If I could somehow deduct the school bus transporatation portion from my taxes, I would drive her to school myself. But, if I'm going to be charged for it every year, I expect the services I've paid for to be available to me and I expect a certain level of continuity to those services every year.
Let's face it - the county did a sneaky bait-and-switch to the parents of Barrow County students this year. Most of us were unaware of the change until school open house this year. They knew there would be backlash, they just wanted that backlash to occur after the point of no return.
However, we know that isn't how things are done, and they never will be done that way. We always will be forced to subsidize other people's access to programs and services in the form of income and property taxes. I pay a king's ransom every year in income and property taxes. I'm sure that I'm more than covering my portion of the diesel bill to get my kid to school and back home every day (nevermind the years that I've paid when I didn't have a kid in school).
You say that these changes were widely reported? Where? In the Barrow County Journal or the Barrow County News? Honestly, how many people in America subscribe to ANY newspaper anymore, much less a small-town local paper? The Barrow County Board of Ed. and/or the individual schools themselves could've been a little more proactive in informing the parents of the upcomming change. I don't know if you have children attending any of the locals schools, but my daughter brings home many stacks of papers from the school every day advertising some event at school or some fundraiser, etc., which I must scour every night to insure that I'm not missing anything of relevance. They could've used one of those scraps of colored paper to inform the parents of the proposed changes. This didn't happen, to my recollection. Russell Middle School emails me almost daily about my daughter's school work, upcomming events, etc., but never a mention of the changes to the school schedule or bussing.
I realize that sometimes things need to be changed in order to satisfy the requirements of a shrinking budget. However, I think that most of us would've appreciated fair advanced warning from the schools and the county before they did what they did with the busses.
If I need to make a change - fine. But, give me enough of an advanced warning so that I can make the necessary preparations. That's all.