Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Children adjust to school bus cutbacks

Children adjust to school bus cutbacks

It was still dark Tuesday morning when this DeKalb County school bus departed from Oak View Elementary School. LOUIE FAVORITE / lfavorite@ajc.com
By KRISTINA TORRES

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


It was still dark when, at 5:45 a.m. Tuesday, 11-year-old Isaiah hopped out of the family SUV and hustled toward several buses clustered together at Oak View Elementary, a DeKalb County school several miles south of Decatur.

Tuesday is the first day back to class from winter break. It’s also the first day of countywide school busing cutbacks — a midyear change made to save money.
So Isaiah, a fifth-grader at DeKalb’s Kittredge Magnet School for High Achievers, started his day like this: Get up and out the door to catch the bus at Oak View, then take that bus to a transfer point and catch another bus to school, which is more than 20 miles to the north near Chamblee.

He’ll repeat that process in reverse in the afternoon.

“It seems to be going OK,” said his mom, Vernice Robinson, as she walked behind him this morning — making sure he got on the right bus. She said his old bus picked him up about the same time, anyway. “We’re just happy they didn’t take the busing away altogether.”

The cutbacks mean fewer buses will be taking kids to school, one of several cost-cutting measures expected in DeKalb schools this year.
Full story here.

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