7 ms·

UK: most schools start at around 9am to 9:15am Children who live too far from the school to walk catch a bus, an ordinary scheduled bus on a standard route, or

UK: most schools start at around 9am to 9:15am Children who live too far from the school to walk catch a bus, an ordinary scheduled bus on a standard route, or the train# or the metro. They get special bus passes (some get them free, I think most now). What I'm saying I think is why on earth is the Boston school system in the public transport business to start with? (#) Doing your homework on the train on the way to school is one ritual I was amused recently to see is still going strong. I did this and my dad did this (pre WW2).

Khol 8y ago
I came here to say almost the exact same thing. From age ~10 onwards, I would walk to school with my younger sibling in order to get to school for 0850. When I moved schools in year 7, I left slightly earlier to accommodate the change in distance as the school started at the same time, and my sibling walked alone (they were then ~10). My parents went to work whenever they needed to. I could alternatively have taken a (public transport) bus, but the fare would have come out of my pocket (i.e. out of the small monthly allowance I was given to spend on whatever I chose).
logfromblammo 8y ago
In order for a public transit system to be adequate to transport children to school, it has to be adequate, full stop. In the US, a separate public transit system specifically for schoolchildren exists, usually because there is no effective public transit system for everybody. A child cannot catch a city bus from their home to their school when no city bus ever comes within 3 miles of their home. Europeans often don't understand, because American urban planning makes it seem like one would have to be a madman in order to do things that way. It's not madness. That's just the way the economic incentives aligned in the past, and no one has cared to re-break the bones in order to set them properly, so everyone is crippled from birth by the history of the infrastructure.
- ocb 8y ago
  Your point is valid but the person you replied to was specifically asking about Boston. I admittedly don’t know a lot about the public transit infrastructure in Boston but I have a hard time believing it’s less extensive than e.g. Seattle, where public high school students use the standard bus system, with the school district paying for special limited routes where the normal bus routes lack coverage.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Boston has a pretty good public transit system--at least until it snows when things tend to go to hell. It has its share of problems in general but it's not bad overall.
    - iguy 8y ago
      And it could grow quite a bit to absorb all the school traffic. Someone above said ~25$/student/day: sure that's higher than the average commuter fare right now. Couldn't a unified system serve everyone better? And encourage students to spend at least a bit of the day not locked into an institution designed around them.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    Fair enough. I have never lived in Boston myself, so I can't speak to its specific issues. Some school systems in the US are subject to judicial desegregation orders, so that the racially-divided neighborhoods do not result in segregated schools. These may require transit routes that are not necessarily coincident with the daily work commute. Some systems also have magnet or specialty schools. Some have even greater ability to choose (or win via lottery) a school other than the nearest to one's home. As a result, the commute for one child could be longer than that for their parents, and using the regular public transit could result in hours on trains and buses. In such cases, a school bus would essentially be an express, with no stops between school and the residential neighborhood. And, of course, once you run one school bus, that means you now have a school bus infrastructure, which makes it easier to run more buses. The public transit system is usually designed around moving people between workplaces, mainly in the city core, and homes, which are more evenly distributed. Schools are also more evenly distributed, as villages, towns, smaller cities, and unincorporated townships may have had one or more of their own before being annexed into the metropolitan city. As a result, the nearest transit station to both home and school may be the same station. Or they could be on lines that run nearly parallel before meeting in the downtown hub. One possible solution to this would be to build a large, unified school near the city's central transit hub. And that would likely be selected by an algorithm as most efficient. But politically, people prefer their schools to be near their homes. And separated by grade levels. With athletic fields and playgrounds. And lots of separate and distinct administrative regions. Again, the technically sensible solution is untenable, because people just want what they like (and what makes them money).
tssva 8y ago
Public transportation systems in the US are mostly focused on getting people to and from employment centers and therefore don't provide the transportation coverage needed to get students to schools. Also in the US once you are outside a medium to large city public transportation may not be available at all. Or is limited to systems which run only during commuting hours and are designed to transport people from a few centralized locations into the closest city.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
lacker 8y ago
The Boston public schools don't operate on the principle that you go to your local school. Kids get sent to quasi-random schools so that you don't have the good school in the rich neighborhood and the bad school in the poor neighborhood. Instead you get a whole bunch of medium quality schools. Also, this means that children are very likely to not live near their school at all.
- ahmadss 8y ago
  do you at least get to stick with one school until you've completed the respective grades in that school? also - do siblings end up in the same schools? or are they also randomly assigned?
  - cwmma 8y ago
    For high school at least it's like applying to collage, you take a standardized test and send out applications which some schools (Boston Latin) being more desirable then others.
twic 8y ago
> an ordinary scheduled bus on a standard route I'm pretty sure that when i was at school in the UK, there were specific school bus routes. They weren't operated by the schools or the local education authority, so i assume they were special services run by the local bus operators, using stock that would be used on other routes at other times. I believe each route served multiple schools - kids from my school would share the bus with kids from other schools. Since we were the grammar school, full of nerds in garish purple blazers, and they were, well, not, this was sometimes a stressful experience. It may be relevant that this was in Colchester, a town with numerous schools, some quite close to each other, whose catchment areas take in lots of small villages, where there isn't necessarily a good normal bus service. Mind you, i got the (ordinary!) train, so i'm not sure of the detail.
- keithpeter 8y ago
  I take your point, villages -> local market town probably needed special runs. Big city comprehensive boy myself.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Spooky23 8y ago
Boston schools were heavily segregated, and were sued and ordered to desegregate during the 1970s. It's a system with alot of history, impact and strong feelings on both the schools and the city itself.

Khol 8y ago

I came here to say almost the exact same thing. From age ~10 onwards, I would walk to school with my younger sibling in order to get to school for 0850. When I moved schools in year 7, I left slightly earlier to accommodate the change in distance as the school started at the same time, and my sibling walked alone (they were then ~10). My parents went to work whenever they needed to. I could alternatively have taken a (public transport) bus, but the fare would have come out of my pocket (i.e. out of the small monthly allowance I was given to spend on whatever I chose).

logfromblammo 8y ago

In order for a public transit system to be adequate to transport children to school, it has to be adequate, full stop. In the US, a separate public transit system specifically for schoolchildren exists, usually because there is no effective public transit system for everybody. A child cannot catch a city bus from their home to their school when no city bus ever comes within 3 miles of their home. Europeans often don't understand, because American urban planning makes it seem like one would have to be a madman in order to do things that way. It's not madness. That's just the way the economic incentives aligned in the past, and no one has cared to re-break the bones in order to set them properly, so everyone is crippled from birth by the history of the infrastructure.

ocb 8y ago
Your point is valid but the person you replied to was specifically asking about Boston. I admittedly don’t know a lot about the public transit infrastructure in Boston but I have a hard time believing it’s less extensive than e.g. Seattle, where public high school students use the standard bus system, with the school district paying for special limited routes where the normal bus routes lack coverage.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Boston has a pretty good public transit system--at least until it snows when things tend to go to hell. It has its share of problems in general but it's not bad overall.
  - iguy 8y ago
    And it could grow quite a bit to absorb all the school traffic. Someone above said ~25$/student/day: sure that's higher than the average commuter fare right now. Couldn't a unified system serve everyone better? And encourage students to spend at least a bit of the day not locked into an institution designed around them.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Fair enough. I have never lived in Boston myself, so I can't speak to its specific issues. Some school systems in the US are subject to judicial desegregation orders, so that the racially-divided neighborhoods do not result in segregated schools. These may require transit routes that are not necessarily coincident with the daily work commute. Some systems also have magnet or specialty schools. Some have even greater ability to choose (or win via lottery) a school other than the nearest to one's home. As a result, the commute for one child could be longer than that for their parents, and using the regular public transit could result in hours on trains and buses. In such cases, a school bus would essentially be an express, with no stops between school and the residential neighborhood. And, of course, once you run one school bus, that means you now have a school bus infrastructure, which makes it easier to run more buses. The public transit system is usually designed around moving people between workplaces, mainly in the city core, and homes, which are more evenly distributed. Schools are also more evenly distributed, as villages, towns, smaller cities, and unincorporated townships may have had one or more of their own before being annexed into the metropolitan city. As a result, the nearest transit station to both home and school may be the same station. Or they could be on lines that run nearly parallel before meeting in the downtown hub. One possible solution to this would be to build a large, unified school near the city's central transit hub. And that would likely be selected by an algorithm as most efficient. But politically, people prefer their schools to be near their homes. And separated by grade levels. With athletic fields and playgrounds. And lots of separate and distinct administrative regions. Again, the technically sensible solution is untenable, because people just want what they like (and what makes them money).

tssva 8y ago

Public transportation systems in the US are mostly focused on getting people to and from employment centers and therefore don't provide the transportation coverage needed to get students to schools. Also in the US once you are outside a medium to large city public transportation may not be available at all. Or is limited to systems which run only during commuting hours and are designed to transport people from a few centralized locations into the closest city.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

lacker 8y ago

The Boston public schools don't operate on the principle that you go to your local school. Kids get sent to quasi-random schools so that you don't have the good school in the rich neighborhood and the bad school in the poor neighborhood. Instead you get a whole bunch of medium quality schools. Also, this means that children are very likely to not live near their school at all.

ahmadss 8y ago
do you at least get to stick with one school until you've completed the respective grades in that school? also - do siblings end up in the same schools? or are they also randomly assigned?
- cwmma 8y ago
  For high school at least it's like applying to collage, you take a standardized test and send out applications which some schools (Boston Latin) being more desirable then others.

twic 8y ago

> an ordinary scheduled bus on a standard route I'm pretty sure that when i was at school in the UK, there were specific school bus routes. They weren't operated by the schools or the local education authority, so i assume they were special services run by the local bus operators, using stock that would be used on other routes at other times. I believe each route served multiple schools - kids from my school would share the bus with kids from other schools. Since we were the grammar school, full of nerds in garish purple blazers, and they were, well, not, this was sometimes a stressful experience. It may be relevant that this was in Colchester, a town with numerous schools, some quite close to each other, whose catchment areas take in lots of small villages, where there isn't necessarily a good normal bus service. Mind you, i got the (ordinary!) train, so i'm not sure of the detail.

keithpeter 8y ago
I take your point, villages -> local market town probably needed special runs. Big city comprehensive boy myself.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Spooky23 8y ago

Boston schools were heavily segregated, and were sued and ordered to desegregate during the 1970s. It's a system with alot of history, impact and strong feelings on both the schools and the city itself.