Not at all. It wasn't directed at anyone in particular. I'm sounding like a bit of a prig in that post. Perhaps I should redact. Maybe the bus driver was reckless.

I was just struck by what an enormous responsibility bus drivers are apparently assumed to have now and the snap public judgments the Internet allows.

Maybe bus drivers always were charged with such a level of responsibility. I don't know. Probably varies with the school district. I rode a bus for a couple of years in junior high, in a rural Oregon town, but that's it. I walked to school when I was a little kid. In a Los Angeles suburb. We had a crossing guard to help us across a major boulevard but were otherwise on our own until we got home. It was a several block walk. Different place. Different era.

A lot of poorly paid workers -- child care, comes to mind -- have huge responsibilities for other peoples' children.

God help them, and the children, if they make a mistake.

I have to lay some of the responsibility of this onto the parents: if the child is unable to recognize the correct bus stop, then the parents need be waiting at the bus stop for the child, and need to instruct the child to stay on the bus until he can see the parent. If the child does not see the parent, he is to ride the bus back to the depot.
If the child is unable to follow this kind of instruction, perhaps the regular bus is not appropriate for the child.
To expect an employee (perhaps underpaid or overworked) to be as dedicated as a parent is usually too much to ask, although in some cases those employees care much more than the parents.
We had a discussion about responsibility and dedication following a child's drowning at work this year. At the time, there were no lifeguards on duty, the nine year old was in the water, and the parents were nowhere to be seen. One of the offshoots of the discussion was why we entrust lifeguarding to people to whom we are unwilling to pay more than $10/hour: if the work is so important, shouldn't the wage reflect that? And if the wage is an accurate reflection of our perceived value, shouldn't we be more responsible as individuals for the safety of our children?

Yeah,, but you live in VT.. and well VT is a bit difrent,, in very good ways in my opinion. I loved living there when I lived in Burlington in 2005.

VT sounds nice. Here in W. WA, there used to be a bus driver who came through my neighborhood with the grade school kids. She went up and down the streets, stopping at the HOUSES, waiting to see if the smaller ones were either met by a parent or walked through the door.

A couple of years ago (maybe three), the school INSISTED that the driver drop them all off at a local landmark that has a parking lot, and the kids walk the rest of the way.

School just started (relatively speaking), and the subs probably don't know who goes where. And like Centralia, the driver was probably not given a list of who/where, or it was outdated and didn't have the youngest kids on it.

I am not blaming the driver. It's the people who make the rules and who provide the information who are to blame: the school board, usually. Bus drivers and teachers who care can fight the board all they want, but they're going to lose.

Find the info on your school district and see where the money goes. I'll bet you a nickel that most of the money goes to administration. They say the kids are important, but the money is more important.

Sue

Well, we've had our share of stone throwing at the driver and at the school. Someone else failed to.

At five you should be able to look out the door, and say "I don't think this my stop." ESPECIALLY if the kid's mother is normally there. I'm sorry, but I think at least as much fault lies with the kid as with the driver, especially if the driver has only been on the route for four days as was implied by the article vs a kid who's been living in this neighborhood for most of his life. I can't imagine a driver being willing to physically pick up and throw off a kid, sorry, he should have spoken up. (We've got a whole thread on that right now- the irony.)

Kaleb was only a "few blocks from home". Thats what, half a mile?. Sorry, but when I was growing up, I knew how to get home. A long rifle shot worth of walking, in a storm, would have sounded like an adventure to me when I was that little and living someplace where there actually were blocks. I would walk to friends houses and they over to mine, and it was a "few blocks". And if you are a "few blocks" from home, and don't know where you are, shame on your parents.

Lots of failure here, lots of it.

School just started this month.

Young children have the attention span of a gnat.

Fogged bus windows, getting out with head down due to rain... I can see that happening with any kid.

Neither parents nor schools tend to teach young kids to think, they're all about protection and dependency.

Sue

That's my take. If the kid is so unfamiliar with his own neighborhood that he doesn't know where he is within a few blocks of home, his parents need to take him on a few orientation walks. Kids these days are so sheltered it's pathetic.

Lots of generalizations being thrown around by lots of folks in this thread. It seems that our society has gotten so impersonal (electronic this that and the other) that everyone is them except us, and there aren't many of us! (And of course this reply is starting to look a lot like the pot calling the kettle black ).

Trying to get back on point. Parents are responsible for their kids. That does not mean responsible for sheltering and protecting them (though that is a part of it). It means push them, get them to grow, let them grow, let them fail (within reason).

Most kids do have short attention spans, but these are the same creatures who can memorize tons of lyrics, and lots of obscure facts about dinosaurs. I think it is reasonable to expect most kids old enough to ride the bus to know their stop and how to get home if they are at least dropped off in the right neighborhood.

If the weather is horrible and my kid is on the bus - I'd better be at the stop waiting for them or have someone else I trust be there if I have any doubts at all about my kid knowing what to do. Depending on circumstances this may be a great learning opportunity as well, but only if the parents are around to treat it as such.

- Eric

I don't know the exact conditions at the time and place the kid was dropped off. The conditions between 15 and 20 miles away at the same time weren't good. Expecting a child that just started kindergarten to be able to determine whether he is three blocks north, east, south or west of home when it's raining 4" an hour, hailing, lightening and blowing 40-60+ mph sounds like it might be a bit of a stretch to me. At the school my kids attend the staff wouldn't allow a child out the front door without an adult guardian.

In the TOPIX forum associated with the news story a suggestion was made that, particularly during extreme weather, the kids could be issued those cheap, disposable hospital bracelets with their stop number on them. It would be easy enough for the driver to check the bracelets quickly as the kids pass on the way out the door.

It sounds like he'd only been on that route for 4 days. If he was supposed to know all 60 kids, I think he needed to be given more support, such as a written list saying what kids got off at which stop. Else how is he supposed to know? Even if you think he should have memorised the entire sequence by the fourth day, how was he supposed to manage on the first day?

So the school or bus company should have given him a list, but they didn't. Presumably because it's not actually his job. Since the kid was travelling alone, he could reasonably suppose it was competent to do so.

In my opinion it is unfair of the parents to assume other people will look after their children for them.