A Problematic Bus

1018 is a bus route that always arrives at the school barely on time. It’s not the bus drivers fault; it’s the route. Many kids and parents are angry with this. I’ve compiled some quotes from emails of angry parents (I will keep them anonymous) and pasted them below:

“Some CVMS bus routes consistently run late. Late to the point that kids miss a big chunk of 1st period and are among the last to leave CVMS to come back home too.

“Bus 1018 was also fraught with delays and breakdowns two years back, so its performance this year has been frustrating. Last year was better, not sure what has gone wrong again.”

“Agreed, we all gave it a few weeks but it seems to be a systemic issue and not new school year settling in pains.”

There are 35-40 kids on the bus in the morning and around 50 kids in the afternoon. All of these kids are getting to school 2 minutes before school starts, and home at 4:00 earliest. I’m the last stop, so I usually get home at 4:20. There’s a problem right here because, with the amount of homework I have, along with extracurricular activities, I’m usually working into the night. Other kids might have the same problem as well. This bus route is causing kids to lose productivity, and when it comes to that, everyone knows that the school will fix it.

But the school hasn’t fixed it. It’s been going on since before I even took that bus. Why is this a problem? There’s plenty of money in the district. Just buy another bus. I know they’re expensive, but as I said, RRISD has a lot of money. If you could split this route into two, all the kids would get to school on time.

One problem is that the route has to take and drop off elementary kids. And we all know they aren’t the most mature. But have the teachers and parents get them to get on the bus faster. Teach them to be more efficient when it comes to that. Elementary kids don’t have nearly as much homework as we do (which isn’t bad) meaning they don’t have such a rush to get home. But if we can get them on and off the bus faster, that would mean we get to school and back home faster too

In all this bus is a major pain, but all we can do is yell at the school board until they do something right. It seems like the school board is ignoring us, but if we keep bringing up this topic to them, they will eventually do something.