DHS, Renfroe Bus Routes Changing

The changes will be effective Tuesday, Sept. 18.

When the school years started, City Schools of Decatur administrators told parents to expect tweaks in bus schedules. Some routes for elementary students were changed in August, and now changes have been announced for six routes affecting Renfroe Middle and Decatur High bus riders. One change is that middle and high school students will ride together in the morning, but not in the afternoon. That's because many Decatur High students have after-school activities. All the routes were changed because of low ridership and efficiency. Here's the message sent home to parents from schools Transportation Director Simonia Elder. We have observed and assessed our bus routines for 6th through 12th grade students for the first month of school.  We …

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Cleaning Up Dirty Diesel School Buses with Federal Dollars is a No-Brainer

"Our children deserve a safe and healthy ride to school."

By Rebecca Watts Hull and Anne Blair In these tough economic times it is a relief to share some good news about funding for Georgia school systems. On November 4, every school system in the state was invited to apply for over $2.5 million in federal funding to clean up dirty diesel school buses. Diesel exhaust poses the most widespread air pollution risk in the United States. Exhaust from school bus and other diesel engines is a toxic mixture of tiny fine particles and gases (soot) including over 40 air toxics. Fine particles in the exhaust are linked to many respiratory problems including asthma attacks and possible asthma onset. When inhaled, these tiny particles bypass our upper respiratory defenses and can travel into our bloodstream …

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Website To Tell If Buses Are Late

The City Schools of Decatur has installed a new feature on its website.

A few days ago, Decatur Schools Superintendent Phyllis Edwards sent out an email about changes in school bus operations, such as issuing tags to designate which kids ride buses. Last night this email was sent: An exciting new feature is available for families that are interested in seeing real-time bus updates. A webpage has been established on the CSD website that will be updated from the field. A post will be made on this page if a bus is expected to be 15 or more minutes late. To access: go to http://www.csdecatur.net click on News Room> Bus Updates. Families that use RSS feeds can include this page in their RSS reader.

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Decatur Making School Bus Changes

School system will issue bus tags that students must display, place monitors on buses for a few months and give drivers "communication devices."

Decatur Schools Superintendent Phyllis Edwards emailed a memo last night listing changes in school bus operations. Some of the changes outlined in the memo included: If the school system notices a child has not been riding bus but their name appears on the roster, the system will notify the parent and might remove the bus stop, the memo said. The system will send notification of such a change at least three days before it happens. Edwards said the changes were necessary because students sometimes ride buses not on their route; exit buses at different spots, possibly to visit friends; stop riding buses for up to two weeks, which causes confusion with the drivers; act disruptively; and other reasons. The system has also been short on …

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Wheels and Heels

Wheels & Heels: Fixing Buses and Breakfast

Decatur's school bus schedule is designed around the needs of getting children to school for breakfast - but is that a good idea all around?

Nothing riles people up quite as much as when you monkey with their daily routine. Decatur School Superintendent Phyllis Edwards touched off a firestorm this week proposing to lengthen the school day by moving school times earlier. Her reasoning for lengthening the school day is sound: having a longer school day means more time to teach students. But I suspect part of the fury comes from parents who are already frustrated by a current school bus schedule that is not designed around the needs of most parents, but is designed to get a small number of children to school in time to eat breakfast. In Decatur, according to the city school nutrition department, an average of 547 students ate a school breakfast in February, almost 70 percent of …

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Garrett Goebel

9:01 am on Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Follow-up: Probably worth mentioning that I don't consider breakfast or lunch extra-curricular. I have a friend whose only regular meals growing up were the ones she got at school. This is an experience many children unfortunately share.   more ›