Editorial

School Transportation Department does not care about the safety of Our Children

By Joseph Parish 

It seems evident that the Laurel school bus transportation office could care less if their valuable cargo of 6 and 7 year old’s gets run over.

The bus stop for East 6th street and King Street is located just after the bus turns onto King Street. This necessitates children as young as 7 to cross 6th street to get over to the other side. To me this presents a potentially dangerous and life threatening situation. Nothing stops the cars traveling south on 6th street and many of them are traveling in excess of the posted speed limit. As quickly as the children have left the bus the driver takes off.

On Tuesday afternoon, I approached the school bus driver of bus 13 and questioned why she could not stop the bus diagonally at the turn thus halting all traffic and ensuring the children’s safety and departing only after the young child is safely on the other side of the road. Her respond was she has done it this way for 3 years and that is the scheduled stop for the bus. I next contacted the transportation department and I was informed that it will remain the same way as it is and in fact the department has plans to change the bus drop off location for bus 3 which transports 5 year olds. Presently the bus driver of bus 3 is very concerned about the children’s safety and drops off the children as I currently recommend. This driver should be commended for her concern. If the modification takes place for bus 3 this will then mean 5 year olds will have to transverse across a busy 6th street.

All this is telling me is that the transportation office has no concern for our children’s lives. We are talking about our kid’s life here people. I recommend all parents contact the various authorities ranging from school officials to city and state representatives and demand this unsafe procedure be stop immediately. It appears that talk and logic holds no water with the transportation department therefore we, as concerned parents must escalate to higher levels of authority.

Section 10.2 of the Delaware 2004 Model Commercial Driver’s License Manual for school bus drivers states that “More students are kill while getting on or off a school bus each year then are killed as passengers inside a school bus” These are our children and these children should be protected at all measures when they are entrusted in the care of the department of transportation. Regardless of what street you live on our children are precious and deserve protection. Become the authority’s worse nightmare and contact all those in public offices and demand bus stop safety changes now.