Saturday, January 16, 1999
No bus service but doors open - for the kids
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If you are a student or teacher in Cincinnati Public Schools, four little words can change your whole day.
No yellow bus service.
It means the weather is not quite miserable enough to close school, but the bus companies that serve the district aren't taking any chances.
School's open. You have to find your own way there.
If a child happens to be bused out of his neighborhood school — say he attends a magnet school across town — he has the option of attending the school closest to his home.
His parents take him in, tell the teachers his name and he spends the day in a strange classroom.
These are the ground rules. And, as one might guess, the makings of a very difficult day.
No bus, no children
For the most part, when the yellow buses do not run in Cincinnati schools, the children do not come.
Districtwide, attendance dips below 50 percent. At schools where most families have their own transportation, and perhaps regularly drop off their children, attendance can run fairly high. At North Avondale Montessori, for example, three out of four students make it to school.
At schools where few students live nearby or where families cannot or choose not to send them, the building can echo like a tomb. Without yellow buses, just 13 percent of Winton Place Academy and 9 percent of Jacobs Center students recently made it to school, according to district officials.
With at least a quarter of their students gone, teachers face some dilemmas. Is there any point to introducing new material? Is it fair to give a test? In many classes, there aren't enough kids to discuss a story, do a science project, even shoot a game of hoops in gym class.
Meanwhile, teachers are expected to deal with the students who have dropped in from other schools. As could be expected, most kids don't take advantage of this generous offer. Those who do come are generally scattered across the district. But the potential is always there for a large number of newcomers to drop by, with no materials, no assignments and no clue what the regular class is doing.
These are the days that try teachers' souls. And nerves. And lesson plans.
Why even open doors?
So why do it?
Why open school at all, some of us wonder, when there's so little return for the effort? Why create extra problems for staffs who, heaven knows, have their hands full even on good days?
Suburban schools, we say with a sniff, would never do it this way.
And they wouldn't. Of course, Cincinnati Public Schools are often forced to do things that suburban — and private and parochial schools — would not do.
Which leads to the point of this strange option of no yellow bus service. Some may call it misguided. Others may see it as noble, perhaps even heroic.
For the neediest children in Cincinnati, a “no-school” day means no adult supervision. No heat. No lunch. No books. No structure. No attention. Poor children's parents need to work. Generally, they are hardly in a position to call in and say they simply won't be in that day. No school means many children must fend for themselves.
Administrators and teachers know that, for some children — be it 40, 20 or 13 percent — the best, safest place in their lives is their school. And knowing that makes it awfully hard to close.
Does it smack of mistaken priorities? Purists would argue a school is a place for educating children, not babysitting them.
But then who in this community is ready to step up to the responsibility? Who becomes a bad-weather back-up for children who, like any others, deserve safety, supervision and protection?
No yellow bus service, the radio blares. And in those four words are chaos, confusion and a slightly convoluted message that somebody understands this city's children, and somebody cares.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE