MLS and Career Center parents urged to attend School Board meeting

Just the other day, I was counting our blessings regarding our current school bus situation. In the past, my stepson had been riding his bike to school, with me giving him rides in bad weather. But since he started attending the Greene County Career Center this fall, the Yellow Springs schools have been providing us with almost door-to-door bus service. He catches the bus in the morning at the corner of Allen and Spillan, about a half-block from our house. In the afternoon, the bus driver was leaving him right at our front door.

Bam!

Yesterday, it all came crashing down without any notice. About the time the bus was supposed to drop him off, the kid called me on his cell phone from Mills Lawn School to tell me he would be walking home from there. The explanation, as he understood it, was that, as an economy measure, the School Superintendent had changed the bus route so that he would wait on the bus at MLS for 20 minutes, so that when the grammar school let out he would ride home with the "little kids."

"I don't want to ride with the little kids," he said.

And who could blame him..? Certainly not the parents of those little ones. They already aired out their opposition to such a plan at a special School Board meeting a few months ago.

The only alternative is for him to get off the bus at YSHS and walk from there. Both schools are about a mile from our house. It will be raining when the bus gets in this afternoon. I have instructed him to get off at the high school and I will pick him up.

If he wants to have a bike at the high school, so he can ride home, he will have to ride it there in the morning, leaving the house extra early and riding in the dark. So we are back where we started - only worse. At least with the high school hours, he would be riding in the light. GCCC starts an hour earlier than YSHS.

"What are the other kids saying about this?" I asked him.

"They said their parents would be writing letters to the Superintendent," he said.

Not good enough!

I have discovered during the course of my covering school board meetings for the YS News, that the best way to get action is to show up in person. It is a lot easier to ignore a letter than to dismiss a live body, especially an angry one.

So I urge all you parents of GCCC students who are affected by this change to show up at the School Board meeting thursday night (12/11 at 7 p.m.).

Parents of MLS kids who will be bussed with high school students as a result of this change should also come to the meeting.

Anyone reading this is asked to pass it along to people they know who might be affected by it.

I'll see you there.