Report: Buses late at Catholic schools

Advocate staff photo by ARTHUR D. LAUCK -- Students head for East Baton Rouge Parish School System buses lined up at St. Aloysius Catholic School. Parents and officials at several Catholic schools say buses have been late since switching to a new starting time this year to help the school system cut transportation costs.

A week into the school year, some Catholic school students in East Baton Rouge Parish have waited as long as 30 minutes after school dismisses at 2:45 p.m. for a bus to arrive to pick them up and take them home, parents and officials said.

“We live approximately 3 miles from the school,” said Crystal Harmon, who has children in the fourth and sixth grades at St. Aloysius School. “The children have said their bus has not been getting to St. Aloysius until 3:15.”

She said the late bus arrivals mean it is taking her children 45 minutes to get home, even though they live a short distance away.

St. Aloysius Principal John Bennett confirmed that in several cases, buses have not arrived to pick up students after school until after 3 p.m. Buses have also dropped students off after 7:45 a.m., which is when school starts each day, he said.

“It varies from day to day,” he said of the number of late buses. “Today, we had six or seven late.”

Eight out of the 12 buses that carry St. Aloysius students arrived after the 2:45 p.m. dismissal time Wednesday, Bennett said.

“I have disgruntled parents,” he said. “I have more people coming to pick up their children.”

The increase in parent traffic has caused traffic problems on the streets around the school, Bennett said.

Bennett said school officials had contacted the East Baton Rouge Parish School System twice daily with updates on late buses.

Bennett also sent an email to parents of students at the school, detailing some of the problems.

“From the first day of school, the EBR Transportation Department has failed to deliver all of our students to school or pick them up from school on a timely basis,” the email said. “Our attempts to have all buses to arrive in a timely manner have yet to produce positive results.”

The letter said that if the situation didn’t improve, school officials could contact “the appropriate authorities.”

Bennett would not comment Wednesday on what the school might do if buses continued to run late.

“We will take other steps if we have to,” he said.

Almost 600 of the school’s 1,169 students ride the buses, which are provided by the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Bennett said.

A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Baton Rouge confirmed that there had been problems with the buses at “several of the schools.”

But the Diocese anticipates that the problem will work out, Donna Carville said.

“This is just the first week,” Carville said. “They were definitely on top of it.”

There were also problems reported at St. Thomas Moore, St. George and St. Aloysius, said Chris Trahan, a spokesman for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. He said officials are working to correct the problems.

“We have addressed the issues with some of our schools holding the buses back by even three to five minutes,” Trahan said. “We understand there is an issue, we apologize and we are working to resolve it.”

Trahan said the first couple of weeks are difficult for bus drivers because they are not sure yet which students will ride the buses.

Once drivers understand which students will ride the bus, officials can “tighten up the schedules and shorten some of the routes,” he said.

Catholic elementary schools switched to a 7:45 start time for this school year in an effort to help the parish public school system cut transportation costs.

Starting at 7:45 allows the parish’s buses to operate on a three-tiered schedule: public middle and high schools are picked up first and begin school at 7:10; Catholic schools are picked up second for a 7:45 start; and public elementary school students are picked up third for a 8:25 start.

The move allows the parish school system to use fewer buses and drivers, saving about $2 million this year, officials said earlier this year.

Comments

1) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/08/2012

lol... Phil. I was pointing out the amount of the tax increase due to both his reassessment and the roll forward of only the taxes they voted on last night. You pay many different property taxes, BREC, Library, and City taxes, some of which are not affected by homestead exemption. Again, we were discussing the impact of only the school taxes. You are so correct about vouchers and charters costing districts so much money! There are no real savings when only a few students leave a school. The "state" may actually save a few dollars.... but local districts will lose, big time. Private and parochial schools are just filling empty seats, great payoff for them! And Phil, I guess we could just let the kids drop out and pay for prison space... but prisons are so darn expensive! What I am calling for is a much more holistic approach to education, and I am not asking the government to take over all these things, rest assured!

2) Comment by phil - 17/08/2012

Gee it might be less expensive to have buses that are mobile homes so we can just educate and feed students while they ride around all day. Then we can install beds in the buses and take full responsibility for raising everyone's children. OK so I am exaggerating just a little.

3) Comment by phil - 17/08/2012

Public schools lose money because of the voucher system draining funds away from public schools. Public schools need more money as a result even though the number of students decrease. The public schools system has a meeting and rolls millages forward to collect more tax money. Private schools make more money because they are in business to make profits. GUESS WHO PAYS for all of these vouchers? Take a big guess! YOU DO! Then we will have to figure out how to get buses to take each student to their private school of choice. That is about as short and sweet as I can make this explanation.

4) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/08/2012

@memeK: In for a penny, in for a pound. I might as well make the comments I chose not to make last night when I was tired. memeK made some interesting remarks, and I think it might be educational to comment on some of them. Some of this is not common knowledge, and there is no real reason one would expect it to be. memeK starts with a "focus on schools having students missing, tardy, late and held over when they should be being educated and promptly home for break, nightly routine and the next day." I don't know of any students missing, at least I haven't heard anything about it on the news. It happens, I know, but I don't think there were any missing students in this advocate article. Now, I think that "tardy" and "late" are probably the same thing, and she is correct, we should be concerning with getting children to school on time. Mother Rosary and Sister Therese certainly tried to instill that in me when I attended St. Aloysius. I think I rode the bus about 45 minutes or so each way. I also rode my bicycle a few times. It was only about three miles or so. Anyway, I didn't get much of a break when school was over, because most days the bus dropped me off at Highland Hardware where I worked until 5:30 each afternoon. But breaks, and "nightly routines" are a good thing. memeK then goes on to show the schedule that was mentioned in the paper, about starting times. What she doesn't know, is that that first route, to pick up high school students, actually gets the students to school for 6:50, not 7:10. This is due to the fact that federal guidelines require that students arrive at school in time to have breakfast prior to going to class, and for many of our students, who don't have the resources of middle school parents, and whose mother (many single parent families) may have had to leave earlier to take a CATS bus to work, this is a very important meal. So these busses can start picking up children after they drop off at 6:50. Not quite such tight schedule, not the 35 minutes memeK mentioned, but 55 minutes. Not easy, just not so tight. And they don't have routes all the way across town. They actually try to put the routes overlaid upon one another. Really. Now, I should point out that the EBR requested that Catholic Schools start at 9:00, which would have given the busses a lot more time to make routes, but that was unacceptable to the parents, so the "nesting" of schedules was a second-best solution. I'm not sure people realize it, but the money for transporting students to private and parochial schools is actually part of the "per-pupil" expenditures you hear about from those who think we spend too much. And the state used to pay a portion, until they stopped paying, claiming they had no money. So, yes, EBR is trying to save money. Not sure there were any lay-offs, but the city does not pay unemployment for bus drivers, so that is not accurate. At any rate, somehow money had to be found to cover the costs that used to be paid by the state. Now, about the question of seat belts memeK raises… as she points out, "What I do know is that I'm glad to be a carpooler because who wants their child on a non seat belled yellow tank barreling around town to meet impossible time frames?" I testified on this on a bill in our legislature that would have required seat belts on school busses. To see what I said, just read the National Traffic Safety Administration's website concerning seat belts on school busses. In a nutshell, here is what it says. " School buses are one of the safest forms of transportation in the United States. More than 42,000 people are killed in traffic crashes on U.S. roads every year. Every year, approximately 450,000 public school buses travel about 4.3 billion miles to transport 23.5 million children to and from school and school-related activities. Yet, on average, every year, six school age children (throughout the U.S.) die in school bus crashes as passengers. NHTSA strives to ensure that there are no fatalities in school buses." School busses are built to compartmentalize children safely in their seat areas. Cars and trucks are not. There is evidence that in those few horrible accidents where busses overturn, or are hit by trains, that having every child in a seatbelt would likely have caused more deaths and serious injuries, and make it harder for the rescue of the children from the bus. For whatever reason, half of the children at St. Aloysius arrive by car, probably explaining much of the traffic on Stuart, which I remember was pretty bad last year. I'll join memeK in praying that no children are killed by busses, or by cars in MVA (motor vehicle accidents) driving children to schools all over town. I share memeK's concerns. One final note. There is, in state law, a provision that allows school boards to halt transportation to private and parochial schools if it creates a financial hardship for the district. I certainly was happy to see that big yellow bus every day, since it meant I didn't have to walk.

5) Comment by Mygulfbleedsforu - 17/08/2012

Shorter John Bennett: They're pickin' on us!

6) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/08/2012

I once got in a world of trouble by stating to the Mayor of Baker after he came before the Board and ranted and raved for 15 minutes about how horrible things were with Baker kids being bussed all over town to 42 schools. (I wanted to point out that 37 of the schools were schools that the kids and their parents requested to attend.) When he kept exaggerating the problem, and had no interest in trying to understand that we were undertaking a plan to end the desegregation plan (and we did) that was causing some of the problem,I finally quoted from the Bard. "Much ado about nothing." Needless to say, I was banished from the kingdom. In this current situation, I am struck by the difference between the response of the spokeswoman for the Diocese who said that the problem would work out and that “This is just the first week,” Carville said. “They were definitely on top of it.” Now, contrast that to the head of St. Aloysius, John Bennett. [“It varies from day to day,” he said of the number of late buses. “Today, we had six or seven late.” Eight out of the 12 buses that carry St. Aloysius students arrived after the 2:45 p.m. dismissal time Wednesday, Bennett said. “I have disgruntled parents,” he said. “I have more people coming to pick up their children.” The increase in parent traffic has caused traffic problems on the streets around the school, Bennett said. Bennett said school officials had contacted the East Baton Rouge Parish School System twice daily with updates on late buses. Bennett also sent an email to parents of students at the school, detailing some of the problems. “From the first day of school, the EBR Transportation Department has failed to deliver all of our students to school or pick them up from school on a timely basis,” the email said. “Our attempts to have all buses to arrive in a timely manner have yet to produce positive results.” The letter said that if the situation didn’t improve, school officials could contact “the appropriate authorities.” Bennett would not comment Wednesday on what the school might do if buses continued to run late. “We will take other steps if we have to,” he said." One of these two individuals seemed to recognize that a totally new schedule, a new school year, and construction taking place all around the area on sewer systems and roadways, was likely to produce some initial glitches. The other seemed to want to make sure that everyone knew he was not to blame, and be was busy blaming others, instead of asking for a little understanding, as Ms. Carville did. I'd go with Donna Carville's response as being the more Christ-like response. Much ado about nothing again comes to mind. I can remember sitting with some of the nuns (my former teachers) a few years ago (before they left) and sharing with them stories of what our many of our students in the East Baton Rouge Parish School system lived with every day of their lives. Busses a few minutes late, was not on the list of challenges they faced.

7) Comment by Politivore - 17/08/2012

While the article focuses on the Catholic School kids, note that they're in the second part of a three part process. Typically, in a consecutive process, if delays start in one section, they carry through to the next. I wonder how late the public elementary school kids were?

8) Comment by MemeK - 16/08/2012

Some great dialogue here but topic jumping is all over the place. Let's focus on schools having students missing, tardy, late and held over when they should be being educated and promptly home for break, nightly routine and the next day. Did anyone see "Starting at 7:45 allows the parish’s buses to operate on a three-tiered schedule: public middle and high schools are picked up first and begin school at 7:10; Catholic schools are picked up second for a 7:45 start; and public elementary school students are picked up third for a 8:25 start."??????? Three tiers! That is one bus, one driver and they have to cover 3 routes to 3 different schools. Who knows what time the driver has to start to deliver first tier to school for 7:10 but after that drop they have to get a bus around BR and traffic to run a route and have that route delivered all in 35 minutes. Never mind getting bus unloaded, multiple light cycles, construction and life! Then after dropping off tier 2 around 7:45 but later per this article, poor driver must now get to tier three and have all the kids collected to be dropped in under 40 minutes. We have no idea how far they are traveling or if across town. What I do know is that I'm glad to be a carpooler because who wants their child on a non seat belled yellow tank barreling around town to meet impossible time frames? Now I'm just careful to stay out of the bus's way as those poor drivers being stressed. Has anyone figured out how we are saving money? I mean they cut some people their jobs, but what do you think unemployed people do? Oh yeah, they seek unemployment! So the school system is saving tax money but the city is still paying it out. Smoke and mirrors. Even better is that all of those kids are at increased risk of a MVA and I pray none are run over in the rush as the drivers must feel pressured!

9) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 16/08/2012

@Being_Stupid: You forgot the part about walking uphill in the snow and ice, both ways! Actually, you and I can probably remember trying to write on the old tablets when the sweat was rolling down our arms and dripping off our foreheads. It was hot in those classrooms without air conditioning! Sorry about forgetting to post the Cliff Notes. <sigh>

10) Comment by Being_Stupid - 16/08/2012

When I was a kid we didn't have these fancy yellow school buses to ride to school in. We had to walk all the way to school from home or ride a horse. And every grade was taught by 1 teacher in a 1 room school house with a small bell tower. And we had to use the bathroom outside in an outhouse. The was no separate bathrooms for boys and girls. Everybody, including the teacher, had to use the bathroom in the same outhouse. But then again I could be wrong. Maybe I am thinking about Little House and the Prairie starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert.

11) Comment by Being_Stupid - 16/08/2012

Does anybody have the Cliff Notes to Noel Hammat's commentary down below?

12) Comment by phil - 16/08/2012

Oh yes I forgot - someone DOES need to get to the bottom of that $1.6 BILLION (plus bond interest etc.) sewer project , since someone else here brought that subject up.

13) Comment by phil - 16/08/2012

I think the buttons have already been pushed so I am just pointing that out.. Gary, I did not bring up the sewer project here so why did you? I didn't get to the fact that the voucher system will make a lot of people rich in the long term and perhaps that is why it is being pushed, and if the voucher system grows a lot I still do not know how all of those students will get to a school of their choice.

14) Comment by gary - 16/08/2012

Some good comments this morning from one of the best school members that we HAD in EBR schools - wish you were still there. Phil is gonna be Phil - gotta get to the bottom of that 1.6 billion sewer project.

15) Comment by seebee - 16/08/2012

Good grief. Public school students in our district wait an hour for buses without all the whining.

16) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 16/08/2012

There goes Phil trying to push buttons (lol, this means laughing out loud to the facebook generation). Phil, the "reformers" pushing vouchers and claiming that it is to provide "choice" to parents somehow failed to account for the fact that low-income single mothers without transportation might also want to use vouchers, and they didn't include transportation to the nice private and parochial schools accepting vouchers. These schools may offer transportation, but most don't. Kinda limits the choice for some really hard-working but really low-income families. I am sure it was just an oversight on the part of the reformers. You don't think it might help to "cream" the crop of their income students, do you? Of course, they did increase the household income limits of those qualifying up to around $50,000, so perhaps many of the households at the upper end of that range can afford to drop the kids off. Wait, that doesn't help with the "creaming" problem, does it. <sigh>

17) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 16/08/2012

The vast majority of the students in the East Baton Rouge Parish schools who receive free or reduced meal prices come from working families where the income from the job is simply not enough to pay all the bills. Many of these parents are working two jobs to try and take care of their children. I know many families whose parents work just as hard to provide for the education of their children in private or parochial schools. I applaud both groups of families for wanting to make a better life for their children. We can do more, as a community, to improve the quality of life of all children. As far as education goes, it is not through "choice" as the "reformers" see it. It is through our choosing to work together for the benefit of all children. The Kiwanis Club of Baton Rouge (Downtown Kiwanis) created a Service Project designed to help increase the likelihood of success for students from low-income homes. The project is called 3Rs for 3BR. That stands for "Reinforcing the Rewards of Reading: Building a Better Baton Rouge. The number of books in the home is the single greatest predictor of student achievement, and when Volunteers in Public Schools did a survey here in Baton Rouge to determine the average number of books in the homes of students in the high-poverty schools they were working with, the average was three. Three books. For middle class families in Baton Rouge it is over 400 books. In the last year my Kiwanis Club has donated more than 12,000 books (children get the books by having their mother or other caregiver choose a book out of the bookcases we provide and read them the book while waiting at the clinic or other site serving low-income families) to children in East Baton Rouge Parish. (We accept donations of used books, new books, or money to purchase books and 100% of money raised goes directly to buy books for the children of Baton Rouge. If you want to help, contact me at [e-mail] and lets improve our schools by improving the likelihood that children will come to school from a more resource-rich environment!)

18) Comment by phil - 16/08/2012

This seems to already be a problem, and what happens when all of the school children get on the voucher system and chose different schools to attend? How will they get to their schools? If they ride the regular school buses how will they get picked up and carried to and from their individual schools? I think this is generally called a logistics nightmare. Sounds like a lot of thought went into this - NOT.

19) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 16/08/2012

And now a few words (some are chuckling at those last three words) about the quality of the East Baton Rouge Parish School system. For many of you writing on here or reading these words, your only contact with the public schools system is THROUGH your readings on here. It is a fact that across the country, people think more highly of those public services they directly have contact with, and in polls, for examples, when asked how people rate their public libraries... those who frequent the public libraries rate them much higher than those who merely read about battles over downtown libraries (Ok, so I wanted to contextualize it a bit here.). In the same way, most of the major surveys about public schooling have people provide a rating of public schools in a variety of ways. How would you rate the public schools in your state? How would you rate the public schools in your city? How would you rate the public school your child attends? In almost every case, the closer the rater is to a school the higher the rating. It is no wonder, given all the claims being thrown around about "failing schools." Yet, and this is true of schools here in EBR, as well as throughout the state and nation, the labels given by the state bear no relationship to the quality of the teaching within the school. It COULD be true that the quality of teaching received by the students in a school labeled "F" by the state is atrocious. It could also be true that the education of children attending a school labeled "A" is just as lousy. How can this be?The education of every child is a function of so many factors, the vast majority of which are OUTSIDE of the school they attend. In an elite (competitive) private or public school, the quality of the academic "readiness" of the students when they arrived at the school was already high. I wonder how many parents of students in these schools will admit that they spent hours, week, or months working with their children to help them get through a "poor" teacher. It happens... and it happens whether schools are labeled "A" or "F." It can also be the case that at times we (parents) claim that it is the teacher's fault when we don't see that our child simply DOES NOT LIKE THE TEACHER OR THE SUBJECT. Not that you would ever do this, but I hear it does happen in come cases. (yes, chuckling again.) The fact is that, on average, students with supportive parents and caregivers, and resource-rich environments do quite well in the EBR system, as they would in any system. And students whose parent ( in EBR, as in all school systems educating large numbers of students from poverty, an incredibly large number of students are not living with both parents) is struggling to make ends meet and working in one or two minimum wage jobs are not as likely to have that supportive and resource-rich environment. They might, but it is much less likely. It is NOT that these families don't value education, or that they just don't care. It is the fact that, as the nuns taught me at St. Aloysius, when your belly is rumbling and you didn't sleep well the night before, it is a bit difficult to focus on the Pythagorean Theorem. The "Letter Grade" received by schools is a much more accurate indicator of the percentage of students in poverty in the school than it is the quality of the school or teachers. IF The Advocate ever wished to print the truth about this fact, they could. We have to ask why they don't!

20) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 16/08/2012

The Public School system provides transportation to those private or parochial schools that have requested it, and meet certain state guidelines. The reason the public school system provides transportation is because our state Constitution includes that provision. It is not a "separation of church and state" or "establishment of religion" violation as some have suggested in the past, because it provides for any schools meeting certain requirements to receive the service. As far as the "why should I have to pay taxes for public schools when I pay to send them to private (or parochial} school." As some have said, it is your choice. I choose to purchase books from Barnes and Noble, but I still have to pay taxes for the public Library. It matters not if I use the service. Some neighborhoods pay the taxes for police, yet hire private guards for their neighborhood. It is their choice, yet it does not release them of their obligation to pay the taxes. All government services (and yes, we can debate for quite some time the range of services we should be providing through our government) are theoretically designed to improve the public welfare. Were the services designed merely for individual benefit, and not for the larger common good, then people who chose not to have children would not be paying school taxes. People who did not choose to read library books would not pay library taxes. Again, our system is not designed to necessarily support individual choices, but to support and enhance the larger social welfare for the community in which we live.

21) Comment by Tea_Slayer - 16/08/2012

Quit whining, Dawson. I pay far more taxes than most on this board and I still send my son to public school. That is your choice to waste your money just because you are afraid your child might have to accociate with "them"

22) Comment by 8point6 - 16/08/2012

I was going to comment of this, but, Dawson and RGSanders said it all.

23) Comment by Dawson - 16/08/2012

If you choose to send your kids to a private or parochial school you should not have to foot the bill for someone else's child that is sent to public school. My family pays for my child's private education and pays taxes for another child's education. How is that "fair". I thought the world today was all about being "fair"? When are all of these public school parents going to pay their "fair share"?

24) Comment by lovemykids - 16/08/2012

If you choose to send your kids to a private or parochial school you should foot the bill. The whole bill. My family does and we pay taxes.

25) Comment by RGSanders - 16/08/2012

@cbelse1 - Because those parents are still PAYING for the failed EBRPSS, regardless of where they chose to send their children to an EBR-run school, a private school or Catholic school . In-parish, private school students have as much a right to be transported to school as their public school counterparts. When private school parents are excused of their liability for paying taxes to the EBRPSB, then they give up their right to bus system access.

26) Comment by cbelse1 - 16/08/2012

I still don't understand why EBRPSS is responsible for providing transportation to students who have CHOSEN to opt out of the public school system.