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Wednesday, October 9, 2013

State Auditors, some parents want assigned buses, but MCPS says NO

Gazette: Mix-up has students dropped off at wrong bus stop
...That’s when she looked up Saul Road to see a group of about 20 children crossing the road.
It turned out that the bus driver had dropped the children off at the wrong stop, which was about a half mile away. It fell to Itzkowitz and the two grandmothers to shepherd the children home.
Mix-ups like these are all too likely, say some parents of Montgomery County Public School students, when buses are driven by substitutes who do not know the routes, the children or where the stops are.
Parents want to see some sort of a system in place — such as assigned buses or adult bus monitors — that would minimize these incidents. They also want a way to communicate with the school system when these problems arise.
In 2009, Maryland’s Office of Legislative Audits suggested the county assign students to specific buses so that students can be tracked, an approach used in school systems across the country.
“Not assigning a student to a specific bus route creates a safety concern since MCPS may not readily be able to determine the location of a particular student,” according to a 2009 audit. The office recommended the school system adopt the assigned bus system.
The school system responded that it had considered the idea but deemed it too labor intensive...
 http://www.gazette.net/article/20131009/NEWS/131009089/0/gazette&template=gazette

3 comments:

  1. How would it work a child were on different routes in the morning and afternoon?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why is that a problem? In other jurisdictions they take ATTENDANCE when a child gets on a bus. They know who is on their bus and where they are going. Something wrong with MCPS that they can't figure this out?

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