[hope_full]

The average big yellow school bus gets a miserable six to eight mpg. With the advancing cost of gas and diesel, I'm wondering how on earth the city and county school systems are absorbing this extra expense.

Most school boards with which I've been involved are scrambling to keep the doors open as it is. I wonder if this will be the end of busing kids to and fro? Would school systems, struggling to not make any unnecessary expenditures ever consider such a politically incorrect idea - to stop busing? Will we go back to the days when kids had to put down the twinkies and rise up off their lard-butts and walk to school?

Has anyone else noticed that kids are now dropped off with a couple hundred feet of their home? These aren't buses - they're great big yellow taxis...

I don't know how much the average school bus travels in a day, but these increasing oil prices have got to be putting a hurtin' on the schools.

HF

[RonMN]

They should start having teachers lecture over the internet, & reading/homework done at home.

Busses would no longer be required. Hell, the school building itself would no longer be required.

[Cashmere]

Homeschool.

Better education, better teachers, better culture.

Homeschooling, it's just better.

[joeltrout]

Most if not all schoolbuses in my area uses CNG (compressed natural gas). Same thing with the metro buses.

joeltrout

[Jack]

I assume you're looking at K-12.

What do the schools do? Partly, transfer information. Partly, inculcate students with specific values and behaviors. And partly, they serve as day care while the parents go to work.

Creating an online learning environment would be cheap, when compared to existing costs. However, that ignores the second and third factors, listed above.

To counteract the fuel costs, while maintaining a traditional educational format, one would need numerous small schools close to neighborhoods. However, cities and states are about to face funding issues as revenues decline, thus rendering the option of building new schools problematic.

Interesting times.

[heroineworshipper]

After home schooling using broadband, the next step is getting rid of the teachers & having teachers in India telecommute. The biggest problem with location based teaching is spending 90% of the time waiting for really stupid boring questions to get answered, falling asleep, & missing the 10% of new material.

[Homesteader]

They should start having teachers lecture over the internet, & reading/homework done at home.

Busses would no longer be required. Hell, the school building itself would no longer be required.

Not to say it won't come to that, but I've taken online classes and they are pretty bad. A lot of the learning takes place in a dynamic classroom which cannot be replaced by an online system.

Worse, who is going to be home to get the kids to sit at the computer? How about families with multiple school-aged children and no or one computer? Who will pay for additional computers? etc. . .

Neighborhood schools would be best, even without high fuel prices.

[nocar]

Some small changes might go a long way in some places. Like rerouting the school bus lines so they are more direct, forcing many school kids to walk half a mile or even a whole mile to the bus stop.

nocar

[Kingcoal]

I have a friend who's wife homeschooled their kid until the 6th grade. It's cheap and homeschooled kids do pretty good on tests. I think that in the future we will use the technology we've invented in the oil age to help ourselves out. With supervision, kids can be educated via interactive TV and the internet. The only thing missing is the social interaction, but I think that someone in the neighborhood can use their house as a kind of turn of the century school house. You have to remember that before oil, kids went to school in small groups, generally single room houses, oftentimes the local church was used for this purpose.

Now we get to the real problem; bad parents. Public schools are used, by and large, to socialize and educate the kids of parents who frankly either don't give a hoot, are on drugs and/or alcohol, are dirt poor or out to lunch in some other way. Public schools exist to provide for the social and educational needs of disadvantaged kids. Like most other charitable ideas post peak, I think public schools in their present incarnation, will fall apart. Public schools spend a lot of time and money making up for the shortcomings of negligent parents. Maybe we will return to the old fashioned way of dealing with problem kids from dysfunctional homes - the paddle! I think that tolerance for lazy, bad behavior post peak will be a luxury not available anymore. If a kid screws up regularly at school, he'll get kicked out. If the parents don't like it, they can beg the school to readmit their kid; probably to no avail.

[Cashmere]

With supervision, kids can be educated via interactive TV and the internet.

I like your post in general, but this part is, IMO, the 2nd biggest problem after bad parents.

Kids don't need "media" to become educated.

For most of the morons coming out of the idiot factories after 12 years, writing a sentence is a challenge, as is simple math.

For 90% of kids, books, good parents, and education through the 8th grade would get them as far as they'll get in the idiot factories.

For the top 10% of achievers who could handle the responsibility, I'd support limited internet access.

Otherwise, I think computers in schools are the most phenomenal waste of public funds in schools since the advent of the school psychologist.

[3aidlillahi]

I have a friend [s]who's[/s] whose wife homeschooled their kid until the 6th grade. It's cheap and homeschooled kids do pretty [s]good[/s] well on tests.

Public school kid, eh? Just messing.

[TheDude]

Drifter posted this story in the Everyday Effects of High Energy Prices Thread.

The reality of rising fuel costs students in a Tennessee school district their bus ride to school this week on the last day of the year.

That's a minor inconvenience compared with what might happen this fall in Minnesota, where a district west of Minneapolis plans to eliminate classes every Monday to come up with the extra $65,000 it needs to fill its buses' tanks.

"I know $65,000 may not sound like a lot, but it's more than one teaching position," said Greg Schmidt, the superintendent in the 700-student MACCRAY district.

And in North Carolina, Nash-Rocky Mount Public Schools teachers have scaled back the number of field trips this spring to save fuel, transportation director Binford Sloan said.

The skyrocketing costs at the pump are forcing educators nationwide to trim programs, curb spending and cut down on fuel consumption. Schools are employing unusual cost-savings measures to salvage busted budgets, while lawmakers grapple with how to pay for popular classroom initiatives threatened by the need to pour more money into the fuel tank.

Nash-Rocky Mount schools burned through about $729,000 in fuel in the last fiscal year — nearly twice as much as in the previous year, Sloan said.

The fleet gets about 7 miles to the gallon, which means the district burns through 7,500 gallons every 3 1/2 school days, Sloan said. Recent buys have cost him close to $29,000.

"We've tried pretty much all that we can to save and improve efficiency," Sloan said.

CNG buses like Joel mentioned cost about $25-50K more than diesel, which sells for ca. $250K, so this isn't a short term solution.

[hope_full]

Public school kid, eh? Just messing.

Speaking as a full-time writer, I'm well nigh convinced that our public schools have failed us, certainly when it comes to rudimentary English skills. No one seems to know (or care) about spelling and few folks seem able to express their thoughts in written form.

If we have to return to one-room schoolhouses and/or home-schooling, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Many generations of Americans learned to read using Websters' Blue-backed Speller and McGuffey's Readers and the Bible. All the money and modern inventions (including the gas-guzzling school buses) that we've dumped into public schools have failed to accomplish the high goal of creating a well-read and literate society.

Back to the bus question, I really do wonder how we're going to fund these yellow buses when fuel prices are so high. In my area (Southeastern Virginia), I see buses stopping every BLOCK to release their charges. And then the buses sit and sit and sit (burning more fuel) until the kids are almost into the house. It's nuts.

HF

[3aidlillahi]

Many school districts are in a real predicament. Suburbia has spread the students out so far that they need to use so much gas so it can't as easily be returned to the old days when students would walk a couple of miles to school, if we keep the current system. The buses will have to act more like express shuttles and only make a drop and pick-up or few.

Otherwise, they will find themselves unable to fill up the tanks as prices hit $10/gallon (or equivalent) and higher.

[Homesteader]

Public school kid, eh? Just messing.

Speaking as a full-time writer, I'm well nigh convinced that our public schools have failed us, certainly when it comes to rudimentary English skills. No one seems to know (or care) about spelling and few folks seem able to express their thoughts in written form.

Why is it the blame is always and only on public schools? I see kids every semester who proudly proclaim they have never read a book outside of school. Writing? Pffft!

I don't believe education was intended to be the sole responsibility of the schools.

This past Tuesday there was a funeral for a student at the school I teach at. His mother, a crack addict, was giving some John oral satisfaction in one room, the kid was in the next room. Somebody strangled him and made a clumsy attempt at making it look like he hanged himself.

But yeah, it was the fault of public education that he was semi-literate at best.

Most kids figure they will live the dream with no work a la american idol or rap star and their teachers are an impediment.

Some days I even come home a little cranky.

edited to add: I work in what is arguably the nicest school in the county. I've worked in inner-city schools and know the difference.

[RonMN]

Homesteader Wrote:
but I've taken online classes and they are pretty bad.

I learned more from one show on the history channel than 4 years of grade school history classes...we just need to put a bit of thought into the project.

Quote:
who is going to be home to get the kids to sit at the computer?

Discipline...It's time for the parants to do their jobs for a change. A test score below 60% requires a good spanking...Below 50% and you get a finger chopped off

Meet my son...Lefty