School Bus Culture Wars

About 5 years ago our school district decided that it could reduce transportation costs by shifting school start times. Our fearless leaders paid attention to research that indicates that teens NEED to sleep in, and made high schools start around 9:30.  Elementary schools start at 8:30. The losers were middle school students, who are stuck with a 7:30 am start time.

My son's middle school is about 8 miles from my house. This summer, I agreed with a neighbor that I would be interested in a morning carpool, because a) I wasn't sure that bus service would be provided (my son is going to another school in our zone--not the school the neighborhood is assigned to) and b) I thought that we could get a later start. It turns out that bus service IS provided, and to avoid the traffic snarl at the school we have to leave the neighborhood at the exact same time the bus rolls thru: 6:30am. I'm glad I only committed to a temporary carpool. When I asked my neighbor her reasons for the carpool, she cited wanting to avoid exposure to "language" (presumably English?) and inappropriate topics

As I rolled the minivan out of the neighborhood at oh-dark-forty, we passed the bus. At the stop sign at the end of my street, the mom of the other student in our 'hood who attends this school pulls up behind me. She has not returned calls asking her to join our carpool. So the bus, my Odyssey, and the neighbor's Pilot play leapfrog all the way to school, and I can't help thinking, "This is what is wrong with our society." We just dumped an additional 40 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere (my van gets 20 mph, the Pilot about 15) instead of taking advantage of the public transportation that our tax dollars provide.

Then I realized that the other parents, who are considerably more protective than we are, probably would be horrified that I would chose to prevent the pollution of the air rather than prevent the 'corruption' of my child's mind.  I turn on the radio. It's a song with the lyric that It Coulda Been the Cocaine. I switch the channel to NPR. A story about gay marriage. I turn off the radio to "protect" our guest rider, and I realize that this is another frontier on the culture wars. And that my kid, who is being taught to manage rather than avoid hot topics, is probably the influence these parents want to protect their kids from. I called the school system to make sure that they didn't re-route the empty bus away from our neighborhood, and since the second week of classes my son has ridden with bus without incident.