school buses are more safe than city buses:
They think school buses are safer because it is only students on the
school buses, and you know who the students are. On city buses, it is
everybody, and you have no idea who most of them are.
So for the girls who were groped: They have no idea the names of who
did the groping, and the perpetrators will probably never be caught.
On a school bus you know exactly who did the groping, and they are
likely to get nailed the moment they set foot in the school.
Some families would make the same case for school bus stops. Usually,
but not always, the school bus stops do not mingle with the city bus
stops, and the people waiting at school bus stops are generally students
and parents. At city bus stops, anybody can be there, and start
swinging or robbing. Anybody who is not a student or parent and is
lingering around school bus stops is likely to be noticed.
The mom of the student who got assaulted believes that the assault would
not have happened had both he and his girlfriend got off at their own
bus stops, because the attackers would not have been at the school bus
stops, and the distance between their school bus stops and home were
much shorter than the distance between the city bus stops and home.
And one more concern some parents made was how the school system was
going to make sure that the students actually got to school with the bus
pass. I talked with an Edison student who said that some of his fellow
students are using the Go-To bus pass to skip school and head off to
e.g. the mall during school hours.
Some parents would add the concern that non-students could be on the
city bus watching and targeting students and then following them home.
This may have happened in the assault.
I also think that the Hmong, being on average several inches smaller
than everybody else, feel more vulnerable to problems on the bus.
And the practical problem for Minneapolis Public Schools is that they no
longer have a monopoly, and charter schools will be going house to house
offering school bus rides to Hmong families who transfer.
In the past week I have heard of five incidences of Henry students being
assaulted, groped, or had a gun held to their head while using city
buses going to and from school.
If the news of these attacks and the holdup and the groping spreads
through the Hmong community, charter schools will be picking up new
Hmong students.
Jay Clark
On 2/12/2013 12:57 PM, Emilie Quast wrote:
> Back in the (sometimes) good old days,
>
> There was a parents' program: parents would sign up to ride on a bus for a
> week or so, freeing the drivers to concentrate on the driving, while the
> parent focused on kids' behavior.
>
> Of course back in the Ice Age when I went to school, anyone who acted up on
> the bus would get one dose of correction in the Principal's office and
> (most likely) a second dose when they got home.
>
> No: it wasn't perfect and yes, people did get away with stuff, but still .
> . . There WERE consequences.
>
> You did not want to get on Mr. Les Linder's short list of kids who need
> watching. Really: you didn't. He owned the bus company.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 12:47 PM, phaedrus <<email obscured>> wrote:
>
>> FWIW, school buses won't solve this issue. I can't count the number of
>> times I was punched on a school bus. I punched back a lot fewer times when
>> I was littler because you didn't get beat as badly if you didn't fight
>> back, but I certainly threw punches back in at least a dozen instances and
>> finally started carrying a knife to put an end to it.
>>
>> There were never any consequences because the driver is focused on driving
>> and if you narked, you got beat worse - that's what got me in trouble in
>> the first place, telling the driver when I saw a little girl beaned by a
>> 1/2" ball bearing the kids in back would whip at the kids in front. (I was
>> 8 at the time. She was maybe in 2nd grade.)
>>
>> If the neighborhood bus stops are a problem, parents should wait with their
>> kids at the bus stop. Once on the bus, the kids are a heck of a lot safer
>> with more adults around.
>>
>> Or, y'know, go to a school you can walk or bike to.
>>
>> - phaedrus
>>
>> Jason Goray
>> Sheridan, Minneapolis
>> About/contact phdrus (Jason Goray):
>> http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/jasongoray
>>
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