Update in OP: Length of school bus rides

[maudefindlay]

Just got a text with info on the kids' school bus pick up/drop off times. We have always just had kids at the elementary level and it is just a 15 min ride there and a 20 min ride home after. Not bad at all. If I drive there myself it is close to 10 min, so those ride times with stops sound great. This year my younger two remain at the elementary school with that length of a ride. My oldest will be in 7th grade which is middle school here. Such big changes in the times. Whereas the younger kids get picked up at 730 (school starts at 815), DS will be getting picked up at 630 (school starts at 750--too early for this age imho). His ride to school will be 50 min and ride home is over an hour. That's nearly 10 hours a week on a bus. Is that normal sounding compared to your kids' bus rides or would this have you consider driving them yourself? He normally likes the bus, but also loves getting home fast after school. I guess we will try it out and see. Any school extracurricular or other outside activities will also likely dictate if I need to pick him up as well. The younger kids will be home an hour and a half earlier and it will affect how we can normally pick up and go do something right after they get home.

Update:  We got a new updated schedule yesterday and now DS1 is no longer getting picked up in our neighborhood, but will have to walk 15 min away, ride the bus for 1hr there, then ride 1 hr and 30 min back and then walk 15 min home.  The issue seems like he will be on the bus when they stop at an elementary school to drop kids off and middle school kids stay on the bus, but apparently they sit there a bit.  This has him leaving home at 620am and not getting home till 5pm when school starts at 750 and ends at 3.

[mcsangel2]

How far away is the middle school if you're driving it yourself?

[Jalapeñomel]

This is pretty common in larger and/or rural school districts.

I’m pretty anti-pick up for a plethora of reasons, so I would try it out first before changing.

[maudefindlay]

Jul 23, 2021 12:57:32 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

How far away is the middle school if you're driving it yourself?

10 to 15 min drive from my house.

[sandandsea]

I lived 15 minutes from the school and rode the bus an hour each way from K until I got my license. It was a rural area and I got all my homework done on the bus everyday.

[gardengal]

Jul 23, 2021 13:02:04 GMT -5 maudefindlay said:

Jul 23, 2021 12:57:32 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

How far away is the middle school if you're driving it yourself?

10 to 15 min drive from my house.

Are you sure he's actually going to be in the bus for 50min? 

My kids (elementary) were picked up 40min before school started. It's maaaaybbeee a 5min drive. Because of bus scheduling, because they were close, they were picked up early, dropped off, and then the bus went out & made another pick-up so those kids could get to school in time for it to start.

[ste]

We live in a rural area and DS (going into 3rd) rides the bus 40-50 min each way. If I drive (which I do occasionally to let him and DD sleep in), it’s only 9min.

[CurlyQ284]

Its really long for us, like 45 -60 min for elementary, the school is literally a mile away.

The routes here are long because there aren't enough bus drivers and they pick up all the elementary and middle schoolers, then drop off the middle schoolers, then the elementary kids last. In the afternoon its faster, I think its like 15 minutes.

We drop off and pick up.

[cmeon]

If the school is close, it's likely due to all the stops + traffic and school bus rules (no right turn on red types of things). We've always driven our kids (well, because we can- I know it's not always an option) rather than let them take the hour+ rides (and the early wake-ups). It just eats up so much of their days. H and I split it, he does mornings, I do afternoons. Most years we take an extra kid or two to help, too- not sure we're willing to do that this year (we're knee deep in Delta right now).

[heygrey]

Jul 23, 2021 13:24:26 GMT -5 sandandsea said:

I lived 15 minutes from the school and rode the bus an hour each way from K until I got my license. It was a rural area and I got all my homework done on the bus everyday.

Same. I got really good at writing quickly when the bus stopped to let kids off. 

[fivechickens]

When my niece, 4th grade, takes the bus she is on it for an hour. She lives in a rural area.

ETA: we live in suburbia and my kids bus ride is 20 minutes. The school is a little 5 minutes from our house.

[ellipses84]

Is it at all walkable from an earlier stop? I had this experience in 6th grade and hated the 1 hour bus ride home. I was the last stop but the first stop was at the bottom of a huge hill that led directly to my house. Even taking 20-30 minutes to walk up the hill was better to me than staying on the bus.

Where we live there aren’t busses for most kids so if it’s not walkable parents pick-up/ drop-off / carpool. You could also see if you could carpool with any friends or neighbors.

[starburst604]

I remember being on the bus for a pretty long time as a kid. There were a lot of bus stops and kids along the route so it took some time. I also was a master of doing homework on the bus and ETA to be clear I wasn't doing it on the ride home, I was cramming it in on my way TO school lol. 

[tacokick]

When I was in school, the ride to school was 15 minutes because I was the last one picked up (I was bussed out of my zone for middle school) but coming home it was 90 minutes because I was the last one dropped off because they had a rule I could only be dropped off on the same side of the street I was picked up on. My mom had to get permission from the bus company to let them drop me off on the other side of the street. This was the city/inner suburbs.


This isn’t quite the same scenario but could there be something weird like that going on? Is there another stop he could use and have a short walk? Does the route make sense?

A hour bus ride is a lot if your school is that close IMO.

[penelope]

That sounds reasonable for our area. I found that the rides home were shorter than the schedule showed because they didn't always have to stop at every single house. With after school extra curriculars sometimes the ride home would be cut in half there were so few kids on the bus.

[brooke77]

I had an hour bus ride when I was in elementary school. It didn’t bother me because I loved riding the bus. I actually felt bad for the kids who got and off so fast. My niece and nephew would have a similar timeframe but my BIL is a SAHD so he drives them.

[maudefindlay]

Jul 23, 2021 12:58:49 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

This is pretty common in larger and/or rural school districts.

I’m pretty anti-pick up for a plethora of reasons, so I would try it out first before changing.

Would you mind sharing your top 2 or 3 reasons for not picking up kids? I will likely try out using the bus the first few weeks to see how it goes and am open to all pros/cons.

[maudefindlay]

Jul 23, 2021 13:24:26 GMT -5 sandandsea said:

I lived 15 minutes from the school and rode the bus an hour each way from K until I got my license. It was a rural area and I got all my homework done on the bus everyday.

DS1 likely won't do that as he gets car sick trying to read when he is riding.

[maudefindlay]

Jul 23, 2021 13:28:15 GMT -5 gardengal said:

Jul 23, 2021 13:02:04 GMT -5 maudefindlay said:

10 to 15 min drive from my house.

Are you sure he's actually going to be in the bus for 50min? 

My kids (elementary) were picked up 40min before school started. It's maaaaybbeee a 5min drive. Because of bus scheduling, because they were close, they were picked up early, dropped off, and then the bus went out & made another pick-up so those kids could get to school in time for it to start.

That was info I was sent from the school's transportation dept and I texted a neighbor with older kids and she confirmed her kids were on the bus that long at that age.

[maudefindlay]

ellipses84 and tacokick great question, I will definitely call to ask about other stops that might cut down his time. The only other 3 stops I know of are ones right before/right after DS's so those would not help. I don't hesitate to pick up the younger two on days where I need them earlier, but DS1's school is near downtown in an area that is combo residential and commercial and the car line is a small and tight area and gets very congested.

[sdlaura]

Personally, if DH or I had the ability to drive our kid and save them hours on a bus, we would. And I'm someone who already lets my 1st and 3rd graders walk to school alone, so I'm not super excited in general about driving kids to school. That's just a really long time.

Another option would be to drive him to school but have him ride the bus home.

[steamboat185]

When I rode the bus in suburbia it was 45 minutes each way. I wouldn’t think anything of being on the bus for that long.

[Jalapeñomel]

Jul 23, 2021 14:54:54 GMT -5 maudefindlay said:

Jul 23, 2021 12:58:49 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

This is pretty common in larger and/or rural school districts.

I’m pretty anti-pick up for a plethora of reasons, so I would try it out first before changing.

Would you mind sharing your top 2 or 3 reasons for not picking up kids? I will likely try out using the bus the first few weeks to see how it goes and am open to all pros/cons.

The less students use the transportation, the more they cut the budget for transportation. Also, environmentally, it’s better to have students ride then all the parents drive and idle picking up their kids.

[stemmie]

My kid's commute was all over the place. In our previous district he attended an indie school; the state has parity for bussing, so the local district put all of the kids who attended the school on a single bus that snaked through half the district and met up with a second bus that picked up the other half. DS changed busses to continue to the school while the other bus went on to 2 different private schools. The ride in was about 50 minutes, the ride home could be 25-50 depending on who was riding the bus home and whether the other bus was waiting for them when they arrived to swap students.

Public school elementary ride was about 5 minutes; we could walk it in 10 (they've recently added sidewalks- yay!) because I'm close enough to hear the loudspeakers announce the busses. Middle school rides were about 10-15 minutes- the school is about 2 1/2 miles away.

[plutosmoon]

As a kid, my bus rides were around 45 minutes, the town was very spread out. A lot of close together stops.

I just checked our jr/sr high school bus lengths, we are a very small city in a rural area that buses in from the surrounding tiny towns. The longest tiny town route is 30 minutes, and most of them are only around 15 minutes. All the elementary routes are super short, my DDs afternoon one is a bit longer because the school buses all 3 elementary schools to her aftercare, so it requires them to drive out of zone to drop them off. The town on top of the mountain only has 3 stops, but that town is pretty spread out. I guess they require them to meet at one of the 3 stops. In general I've noticed stops are more centralized than when I was a kid and we seemed to stop at every 3rd house.

[cjcouple]

Middle school for us was 30-35 mins. Picks up at 7:20 school starts at 8:15.

All school routes here have a 45 min ride limit.

[pearls]

Our middle school was like this (4-8th grades) growing up. My parents lived about a half mile from the school and we started at 7:10 am, so we got picked up around 6:20-630ish and were home around 2-230 from what I recall. Definitely really dark in PA during fall/winter for kids that age and long ride for a half mile for my family in particular. We preferred the bus because our friends were on it with us so it was fun for socialization. My parents live in a rural area (to drive from my parents to my furthest friend in the district was about 45 minutes of solid driving, without traffic, just distance) so it was pretty common to have long rides. My parents say now a lot less people seem to have their kids bus in as over the years the line of cars at the drop off has substantially grown and to their knowledge the size of the school hasn't as much.

[macmars45]

From Nov of 8th grade-12th grade I was first on & last off. Bus ride was an hour easily. 6th grade-Oct of 8th grade I was last on & first off so bus ride was 15ish minutes. (I moved a mile in 8th grade.)

K-5th my dad took me to school and I rode the bus to child care after. My dad was a teacher at my elementary school.

[imojoebunny]

I don't see how kids could get much homework done on the bus, since starting in 6th grade, all my kid's school work is in Google Classroom, and they would need Wifi for that, so it would mostly be wasted time. I have a rising 7th grader, and just recently, he has had a noticeable shift in his sleep, where it is much harder to get him up in the morning. Getting him up at 6am would be a nightmare, so I would probably drive him close to the school, and let him walk the last couple of blocks to avoid the traffic jam that is the middle school drop off/pick up. Sort of a compromise that saves me a little time, and he would get a little exercise.

[sadlebred]

Is your house towards the end of the route? I rode the bus for 2 years in HS. I was the 2nd to last stop on the route home, and it was nearly an hour on the bus. I hated it. The school was about 15-20 minutes away from my childhood house, so a bit far for a working parent to drive 2x/day.