You can't ride this bus.
Imagine you send your child out the door to get on the bus to go to school. Now imagine you are at work later when your child calls you from said school and you are told that you have to come get the child because the bus will not drive them home. That is exactly what one St. Paul mother faced recently.
"Rachel Armstrong sent her kids to pick up the bus as usual Monday, but after the driver let the kids on, he told them he would not pick them up again. He even said he wouldn't take them home that afternoon.
Armstrong left work early Tuesday, forced to pick up her kids from Phalen Lake Elementary School."
So why, do you suppose, the bus driver said that. Were the kids disobeying rules? Fighting? No their offense was much worse.
"Her twin girls, 10, and her son, 8, were kicked off their regular school bus. They were told by the bus driver the route is for non-English speaking students only."
Excuse me????? The school district explains.
"However, the district points out, that particular bus route serves one of three language academies. The one at Phalen Lake is for Hmong students learning English.
The academies all have separate bus routes to keep its students together."
OK - I suppose I can understand that. It would be a safety issue, assuming that the driver speaks Hmong that is.
However, there are a couple of questions that the "paid professional" journalists didn't ask that could be very telling in this story. First, if Mrs. Armstrong lived outside of the Phalen Lake school boundaries, how did she (and her kids) know about that bus in the first place? As the parent of a school aged child who does ride the bus, I can tell you what takes place at the beginning of the school year. In addition to the letters you get telling you who your childs teacher is and what the class hours are, you get a letter from the school district (if they run their own buses) or the bus operator telling you what bus your child rides, what time it picks them up and where! Did Mrs. Armstrong get such a letter from Phalen Lake Elementary? It would seem that she had, otherwise how would she have known where the bus stop was? Also, if you are a bus driver and three kids who are not supposed to be on your bus get on the bus, do you wait until January before you say something, or do you question it sometime in the first week or two of the school year. Remember - these kids have been riding this bus since September. If they were on the bus and they didn't belong there someone would have said something sooner, don't you think?
I think that there is a lot more to this story than was presented here last night. Will KSTP's reporters push for the "rest of the story" or will they just accept it at face value. Time will tell, but I'm not holding my breath for more. After all, if they answer the questions, well then the story just won't be as sensational and if it's not sensational then were is the news?
"Rachel Armstrong sent her kids to pick up the bus as usual Monday, but after the driver let the kids on, he told them he would not pick them up again. He even said he wouldn't take them home that afternoon.
Armstrong left work early Tuesday, forced to pick up her kids from Phalen Lake Elementary School."
So why, do you suppose, the bus driver said that. Were the kids disobeying rules? Fighting? No their offense was much worse.
"Her twin girls, 10, and her son, 8, were kicked off their regular school bus. They were told by the bus driver the route is for non-English speaking students only."
Excuse me????? The school district explains.
"However, the district points out, that particular bus route serves one of three language academies. The one at Phalen Lake is for Hmong students learning English.
The academies all have separate bus routes to keep its students together."
OK - I suppose I can understand that. It would be a safety issue, assuming that the driver speaks Hmong that is.
However, there are a couple of questions that the "paid professional" journalists didn't ask that could be very telling in this story. First, if Mrs. Armstrong lived outside of the Phalen Lake school boundaries, how did she (and her kids) know about that bus in the first place? As the parent of a school aged child who does ride the bus, I can tell you what takes place at the beginning of the school year. In addition to the letters you get telling you who your childs teacher is and what the class hours are, you get a letter from the school district (if they run their own buses) or the bus operator telling you what bus your child rides, what time it picks them up and where! Did Mrs. Armstrong get such a letter from Phalen Lake Elementary? It would seem that she had, otherwise how would she have known where the bus stop was? Also, if you are a bus driver and three kids who are not supposed to be on your bus get on the bus, do you wait until January before you say something, or do you question it sometime in the first week or two of the school year. Remember - these kids have been riding this bus since September. If they were on the bus and they didn't belong there someone would have said something sooner, don't you think?
I think that there is a lot more to this story than was presented here last night. Will KSTP's reporters push for the "rest of the story" or will they just accept it at face value. Time will tell, but I'm not holding my breath for more. After all, if they answer the questions, well then the story just won't be as sensational and if it's not sensational then were is the news?
posted by The Lady Logician at
6:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home