A Surprise And A New School Of Thought

I received an email yesterday from a recent reader informing me that this blog had been included as an entry on one of their blog lists. The link that was supplied indicated that I was one of 40 international bloggers writing about living in the suburbs and a quick scan of the list revealed some blogs from which I have tried to take my inspiration. I was really quite flattered. I quickly passed on the good news to Mrs. Sweeper since I was feeling real good about myself.

Then, I spent a great deal of time last night reading most of the other links and I am not so sure that this is a good thing. To be sure, they do have a balance of positions. Everything from the rabid “we have to move to the suburbs” to the “man are they going to be sorry someday” type of blog post from around the world. From those selling the myths of suburbia by retelling the myths of downtown to those who claim to see the despair of massive decaying home tracts. I think that they may have done a Google search on the word “suburb” and took a random sample of them all.

Oh well, exposure is exposure. I will take the good with the bad.

One of their links did cause me to contemplate the continued, less than cost effective, manner in which we use our schools. Take for example, the use of buses to get our students to and from school. Can it or should it be done a better way?

The first thought was to find out which portion of the annual school budget is used for transporting students and is it required. Finding the Fayette County Schools annual budget online is not an easy task and even then it would be an old one, so I took another tack. I looked at their fast facts.

They have 250 buses on the road daily, burning an estimated 2,200 gallon of fuel, to haul an estimated 34,000 students to 50 separate locations (and back) and covering approximately 15,000 miles. That is in a day.

Their start of school year enrollment is stated as 36,900 so that means that an astounding 92.1% of all enrolled students ride the bus. Daily. That makes 7.9% who walk or are driven by parents.

Why is it then, that there is always a traffic nightmare when passing any and every one of the 50 individual schools, morning and afternoon. The number of parent driven autos dropping off and then picking up the non-bus riding students is impressive. It also makes it difficult on those others of us trying to get to work on time.

I suppose that the 34,000 number could be the total daily rides and not students and that would cut the amount of students carried to about 17,000. That results in 46% who ride the bus daily and 54% who arrive some other way. Now we are talking a more reasonable figure.

But, do we need to pick up and deliver students to school when their parents clearly demonstrate that they for the most part are willing to do it? Our state law says that a public education needs to be provided but I know of no requirement to provide for transportation to and from said education. Have you seen the long lines of idling autos lined up in front of and looping around most of the schools in the hour before dismissal time? The environment would benefit greatly if all these carbon belching vehicles could be held to a minimum. Would it not make sense to route at least some of the existing public transit services to the schools and have a portion of the trip accomplished that way?

The development patterns of the past 80 years, and particularly the last 40, have contributed more to the time and distance needed to provide the services like school buses and public transit than they have in the rest of recorded history. We seem to be working at crossed purposes when we build in a lack of connectivity and demand that a service, supposedly delivered as a courtesy, be extended through a convoluted, circuitous path and expect our streets to remain tranquil and serene. Good luck with that.

I guess, my whole point here is that with the school district spending over $11,500 per student and a great deal of that in transportation costs how much more effective could they be by spending that money on class room work instead? The cost of fuel will continue to rise and the distances could get longer, so now is the time to consider/plan for a viable alternative and all options should be on the table. What is the sense of burning 2,200 gallons of fuel a day for 46% of he students and the parents burning probably half again as much for a remaining 35-40% while being taxed for both the schools and Lextran.

As an aside (and final thought), this would also add some stability to the school calendar since the calling of school for snow would depend on the parents decision of whether their child attends in inclement weather or not. Classes will be held, it is up to you to get your child there.

Latest On Artistic Stops

I found out the other day that the opening of Art in Motion's latest bus stop at Newtown Pike and Ash St. is set for August 31. Called the Bluegrass Stop, it sits across Newtown from the Lexington Health Department building and is the third in a growing set of designed bus stops in Fayette County.

I visited Art in Motion's website for details on the opening and some of their next projects only to find that it has not been updated since late March.

So far they have built the Bottlestop (on Versailles Rd), Artstop (at Elm Tree Lane and E Third St), and Bluegrass stop(Newtown and Ash) with the Gardenstop under construction at Euclid and Linden Walk. Other than this there is no information on their site.

Here is what I do know about their future plans. The conversations for a stop near the Good Foods Co-op on Southland Dr are progressing well and a location for a stop in front of the Fayette County Schools Central Office has been set. I have not heard of either having a design settled upon and hope that they will have another competition for one or both. The Central Office stop will have space for revolving displays of student art and achievements.

I know that the local high schools have some advanced engineering or design classes and hopefully that can be enticed to submit some basic concepts from which the professionals can finish the design. Perhaps the School Board will take this suggestion into consideration.

I am also hopeful the the solar collector vs metered electrical lighting situation will be resolved.

Every Day Should Be Walk To School Day

Today was "International Walk to School Day" and this month is "Walk to School Month" and finally both of my little Sweepers can walk to school together. Out the door and into school in ten minutes, fifteen tops. This reminds me of the days of my youth.

I grew up in a different day and time. I started school back when you were expected to walk to school. All of my classmates were doing it so it was not a big thing. I walked across the park and either skirted the ballfield or traipsed right through it, although that was hard to do when the high school band was practicing on those crisp fall mornings. Walking across with a sister who was two years older and later with one two years younger, we were joined by other families of kids on the block. Passing by the old auditorium and crossing the Kentucky/High/Maxwell intersection, then down by the firehouse and the crossing guard. A piece of cake for any elementary school child of the mid 20th century. And I even went home for lunch...alone.

Middle school was a 1 mile bike ride away through Chevy Chase and high school was a five minute walk, cross Main St and enter the front door. At that point I lived closer that those who drove to school could park. To me, every day for 13 years of public education was walk to school day and for the time that I attended the University, I walked there also.

These days some districts have discouraged walking and biking to school and some have outright banned it. The placement of some of our more recent schools have also made it harder for those who live nearby since they are built near intersections of major, multi-laned highways and not centrally located to the residential areas. Only one of Lexington's five high schools is directly on a major road, though the private one are mostly on highly traveled roadways.

Any parent who these days wishes to allow their child to walk to school, or even several blocks to a bus stop may be considered to be a negligent parent by some and a candidate for "child abuser" by others. Is it any wonder that our children don't have any clue as to where they are or how they got there when we shuttle them around everywhere they go. My oldest son was nearly 16 before he would venture more than six blocks on a bike by himself and would ask me "Where should I go?". There is no way that I could trust him out there with a car like that. That is the real child abuse.

The EPA has begun to monitor the air quality around selected schools nationwide and primarily in depressed areas yet all schools should probably be monitored, especially during the morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up periods. The suspected pollutants should be auto exhaust rather than the industrial type. There has already been evidence of harmful effects on pregnant women living near generators of auto exhaust, so how much more harm are we doing to our children?

On a side note, I saw a Twitter entry for the Mayor's Chief of Staff the other day in which she urged everyone to participate in the Second Sunday "event" this weekend and directed those interested to the Government's web site for parking locations. I would have hoped for more of an appeal to use public transportation than to use the private vehicle. Why was Lextran not included in the planning of this "event"?