News-Record.com

"The lateral load work is not as extensive as the work recently completed at the three middle schools – there is no interference with HVAC or electrical and no welding will be required, which will streamline costs tremendously".

Sounds like Terry Grier is almost celebrating.

The million dollar question is which school is next? Jennifer, do you think they are going back and checking which projects our foxy friend worked on?

Also, I heard a rumour. Is it true that Hermon Fox is a personal friend of Deena Hayes and spouse?

Oh goood! I'm happy the work is not that extensive. Otherwise, all those parents of students that have been in those rooms since 1999 might be a little upset.

Thanks Dr. Grier. You deserve a raise.

In all fairness I don't believe Dr. Grier was here in 1999. I am glad they are checking all of Fox's work.

Jennifer and Morgan it would be really good to know who recommended Fox in the first place.

124.

This is off the subject, but I have noticed some
very long bus rides for students to and from school.

We need to put a cap on how long students are required to be on school buses.

A student from W. Vandalia street must get on a bus
at 6:09 and arrive at school at 8:30.

If we have students on buses over an hour, we need to make some major adjustments. Students should never be on buses more than two hours a day.

What does the transportation department have to say about this? What can be done? When?

Concerned Parent,

What can be done? The only thing that can be done is to vote out most of the current school board. Unfortunately, there is only 1 contested seat (District 2). It would be great if citizens in other districts would conduct a write-in campaign to get more appropriate board members in place.

You see, with the current board, busing trumps everything - including education.

The BOE bends over backwards to give any student any choice that exists somewhere in the county. This causes long bus rides. The solution is to send your child to a different program that does not take two hours to get there. If your child is going to the local schoo, it will not be two hours.

2 hours! You could drive to Charlotte and then some. I hope Joe is right that this is a special magnet program of your choice. Otherwise something is very wrong!

Schools/Bus Trips/Go To:

http://guarino.typepad.com/guarino/2006/08/the_mine_field.html

Joe,

These students are not magnet school students.

Look at the Dual Tier bus stops. Students
that live on W. Vandalia are in Dudley's school district and must get on bus 513 at 6:09.
School starts around 8:45.

Students that live in Gibsonville on HWY 61 N and ride bus 203 must get on the bus at 6:27 and arrive at Eastern Guilford High school at 8:30. Who knows
how long the bus ride would be if they actually
wanted to attend a school in Greensboro.

Students that ride bus 311 from HWY NC 61 must get on the bus at 6:50 to arrive at Eastern at 8:30. They return home around 5:15. This is aroung 3 hours a day. Those concerned about childhood obesity need to take into account the amount of
time a day our students are sitting on a cramped school bus.

We want even start the discussion that the buses are over capacity.

Parents....social services..
What are we thinking?

If a parent made a child sit in the same seat with no water, food, or ability to go to the toilet for three to four hours every day, 180 days a year.

The parent would be investigated by social services for child abuse.

So why, do we allow the Guilford County transportation system to get away with this???

Concerned Parent--

I so feel your pain. This has been an ongoing issue and it is not being resolved. I addressed the school board about this two years ago when the policy was rides would be no more than one hour. While the late Mr. Moen was able to alleviate my children's ride nothig was done to resolve the issue. Last year when my sons were being picked up at 5:55 my then 10 year old son addressed the board. He got a lot of "aww, isn't he cute" and absolutely no resolution. Mr. Duncan sent him a form letter two months later thanking him for taking time to bring up a very important matter. The only change was one of policy--the board changed the wording from no rides over one hour to 'an attempt would be made to make rides no more than one hour.' This was, let us say, an interesting lesson in civics for my boy.

The net effect of the efforts on the part of many parents to 'put the children first' has been that with the two-tiered hub system the ride between school and hub is under an hour, the wait for the next bus is under one hour, then the ride on the bus between hub and home is under one hour. I would be happy to pull out my notes with lists of reasons that these bus rides are not appropriate (from obesity to diabetes to lack of sleep to the danger of waiting at bus stops in the pitch black to lack of time for homework) and share them with you but I must warn you that the board has ignored all logic and reason on this issue.

Oh, and just to make it more interesting, two years ago the principals were instructed not to discuss transportation issues or advocate for the students in transportation issues as transportation is not in the academic arena. No help there.

I am out of ideas but would certainly support some positive action on this issue.

Concerned parent:

My experience with the posted bus routes is that the posted bus routes are always longer than the actual bus routes. I'm not sure if they just overestimate the amount of time to travel between each stop or what, but I know my kids were never on the bus the amount of time that the posted bus route said they would be.

That may not be the case in the situations you listed. I agree 3 hours is too long to be on a bus a day.

One more piece of data - my kids' bus rides are LONGER than what is posted on the website.

In fact, coincidentally, I just had a mom who was concerned that her child had missed the bus and wanted to know if my child was yet home (same bus). No - the bus is averaging 30 minutes past the posted times.

Oh, and ZhaK - let's not forget that there are clear links between diesel exhaust and the rise in asthma among our children. Many believe this is due to longer bus rides.

Sandy,
what do you think is an acceptable bus ride time? I would say 45 mins is the max for those of us being forced to go away from our neighborgood school.
If you request a special magnet then that is another thing.

Acceptable bus rides in my opinion are 30-45 minutes. Many of us that live in the county are use to 45min-1 hr. We live 5.5 miles from school and my middle school kid gets out of school 3:45, and arrives home 4:30. We have many that take 1+ hrs, and always have.

The problem is the overcrowding of buses. Last year our middle/hs had 42 buses, this year 37 with about 200 more kids. We will be getting more buses (and I guess changes in routes) on Tuesday. Probably 1/2 of the students drive or ride with parents. What would happen if they all road the bus! We don't have room to park more than we have and GCS can't afford that many buses-- at our schools alone, if everyone rode
buses and the average bus held 50 that would mean 75 or so buses...(nwhs/nwms/northern housed on our campus=3700 students)

Morgan and Jennifer -

You haven't heard that Hermon Fox designed any of the trailers in use at GCS, have you??

For the first time, I think I'm happy that my kids' classes are in trailers.

I have formed a group for posting issues with
the Guilford County transportation system. They
are putting more and more students on buses. Some have heat and air conditioning issues, some have extremely long rides. This will continue growing until, we go to them with a strong voice and say enough is enough.

They are so.....concerned with childhood obesity that they remove soda from the schools, but don't take into account the 3-4 hours of complete inactivity that these kids have on these buses 180 days a year. If we do not do something now , 2 hours one way will quickly become the accepted norm.

Anyone wishing to join a discussion with other parents about the transportation issues
with the Guilford County School system may
go to groups.yahoo.com/group/gcs_transissues. (Try this link.)

A coordinated effort may get this corrected and put it back on the books, that
"No child will ride a bus more than an hour one way. The buses will have adequate heating and air conditioning to maintain a comfortable environment."

Joe,

I don't recall saying my student attended a magnet
school. He attends the closest school to our home
which is about seven miles away. When he attended
Gibsonville Elementary which is also about eight miles away. School would be out at 2:10 and he would be home at about 2:45.

A couple of years ago he would get out of Eastern Middle about 3:30 and he would be home about 4:15.

Now, at Eastern High he gets out at 3:45 and would not get home until about 5:15. The length of time from the same distance on the same bus keeps growing.

By the way it is the same basic route, middle schoolers and high schoolers ride the same bus.

Just saying this time creep needs to stop.

Concerned Parent,

Thanks for taking the initiative to form this group. I am going to check it out after this post.

By the way - is Eastern your closest school or are you one of the unfortunate families whose closest school is Page, but are being bused to Eastern?

According to Yahoo, there is no group with the name posted by Concerned Parent. I would love to share some stories about our transportation issues.

Jennifer and Morgan

It looks like you have a challenge to do a report on bus safety, times of bus routes, older children riding with younger children, fighting on buses, comfort on buses (heating and ac), etc.

I don't believe we have had a bus safety story since 2004.

I thought no ride was supposed to be longer than 90 minutes. Three hours of sitting a day is still too long.

We look forward to reading this in a Sunday front page edition.

NC Transplant,

I put a link in to the site Concerned Parent started.

Concerned Parent,

Hope you don't mind that I added the link! If you send me an e-mail (jfernandez@news-record.com) I can send you a code that you can use to create links. I tried to plug it in here, but it kept coming up as a link - you couldn't see the code. Sigh.

Barbara Ann,

We'll see if there's anything we can do. We've been kind of swamped with the Judge Manning stuff, the structural design flaws, Smith Academy costs rising, back to school stuff, etc.

If anyone out there wants to talk to us about bus safety problems or concerns about bus rides that are longer than they had been, shoot us an e-mail or give us a call. We'll listen to anyone's concerns, but if you're willing to give us your name and be quoted in any stories, even better.

jfernandez@news-record.com or 373-7064
mjosey@news-record.com or 373-7078

Jennifer,

Thanks for adding the link to
groups.yahoo.com/group/gcs_transissues.

I may also be reached at gcs_concerned_parent@yahoo.com.

The bus routes and times are posted on the web site. You can see for yourself the longest and shortest routes. It is true that some of these times vary and can be longer or shorter times.

Some of the times shorten thanks to parents that can find alternate transportation. Sometimes this is not an alternative. Sometimes this is dangerous. Especially if the alternative is a 16 or 17 year old neighbor.

After another week, the routes should
be settled in and everyone will have an idea of how long the route will be for the rest of the year.

We may not know about these routes if parents do not speak up. I have had a very difficult time making an alternative arrangement this year.

When you have to be at work at 8:00 and the school does not want your student on school grounds before 8:30, it is very difficult.

Safety should come first:

1) An hour per student one way should be the goal,
pushing 1 1/2 - 1 45 min is too long and should
be adjusted. Ninty minutes is not an
acceptable goal.
2) If the seat is built for two adults there should
only be two students per seat, especially middle
and high school age students.
3) There should be no student standing in the
isle.
4) I am very opposed to middle school and high
school students riding on the same bus. This
has to do with the fact that my 12 year old
was assaulted by an 18 year old in the school
parking lot on the bus.

This labor day the CB will be dedicated to Marti Sykes. Her service to Grimsley and her ability to keep it white all these years is an incredible achievment that must be celebrated.
Her daughter graduates this year so its time for the boards favorite grouch to move on. Her mission "WhiteGrimsley" is now complete.
Please join me in dedicating this labor day to (s)Marti.
Marti, we luv ya!

Those sound like reasonable goals, GCS Concerned Parent. Reducing bus rides to 1 hour or less each way for non-magnet schools shouldn't be an impossible task.

I believe what you are saying about it not being safe for middle school and high school students to ride the same bus. But isn't it sad that it has to be that way?

In many rural parts of the country, five-year-olds ride the same buses as 18-year-olds. And we don't hear about widespread safety concerns in these areas. Why does Guilford County Schools seem to have so many problems with student safety? Why do our schools appear to be less safe than many other school systems?

Good question "sad but true".

The reason our schools are less safe is because DIVERSITY is the number one Core Value in GCS and SAFETY never made the list at all.

Heard about two bussing issues this week.

1) There is a diabled wheel chaired boy at Southwest High who was injured on a bus on the way to school because the driver was driving too fast. Apparently the authorities are trying to hush it up. Morgan/ Jennifer, maybe you should investigate this one.

2) A middle school boy at Southwest middle was stuck at the school until 9.00 pm one day last week. His parents dont have a car and couldnt get him. He had been at a sporting event so I dont know if he missed a bus or something. He is from the Welborn area of HP.

Thats life here in Guilford County.

CP2.

Concerned Parent2,

Correction: That's life in High Point.

The rest of Guilford County has neighborhood schools.

Concerned Parent2,

"The rest of Guilford County has neighborhood schools" is not accurate, but you may not be
familiar with our school zone and the actual
distance.

Students on Yanceyville St and Summit Ave. in
Greensboro are definitely not in the
Eastern Guilford "neighborhood". In case you
are not aware, Eastern is in Gibsonville NC.

Yanceyville is within walking distance of Page
high school. T

EG Parent,

Please accept my apology. I was aware of this other unfortunate situation, but did not recall it as I wrote the post.

By the way - who is (are) the school board representatives for the areas being bused to Eastern?

And - why do you these areas have been targeted?

No problem, we are often forgotten.

Anita Sharp is the Eastern Representative per se.
Although, I have seen Alan there several times.

Kids have been bused to Eastern since the original redistricting. Look at the old map.

Why? They needed somewhere to put students, but
why our area looks like a middle finger going into
Greensboro from Gibsonville is your guess.
We have one bus that travels 45 minutes before it drops off the first student. With gas prices the way it is today, tell me that makes any sense. This is also the bus with the most discipline problems.

Why does Guilford County schools have discipline problems on buses?

Because they pack them in the buses like sardines and make them sit in the same seat for 1 - 2 hours twice a day. Some have A.C/heat some do not.

Since redistricting, we had a school bond.
Why another high school was not built somewhere between Page, Dudley, Northeast, and Eastern
to help with the overflow of students
I have no idea. Why did the Dudley renovation did not make room for some of these students? Why was Lincoln not modified to take some overflow from the high schools?

You bet it is going to become more and more of a problem since the growth in the Eastern part of the county is now mirroring the growth around Sowthwest High School. The school originally built for over 800 students is pushing 1200 this year. The cafeteria is overflowing. The buses are overflowing, the bus route times are increasing, and the congestion is increasing.

The next time they bring in trailers they need
to include a few more to serve as an additional cafeteria.

We need a new school building, cafeteria, gymnasium, locker rooms, classrooms, auditorium,
and technology........

Now let me tell you about students ability to
participate in after school activities.......

they can't!!

I know a little about overcrowding since I live inthe NW area. Our high school was built for 800, expanded to 1600 and now have 2500, yes Northern will take about 600 in over 4 years.. but with the growth of about 8% a year it won't help. The truth is you can't catch up construction in 6 years, when you haven't done anything in 20 plus years. Second truth, urban flight is still happening.. many who can afford it move for what they see as a better way of life. Page/Dudley/Smith/Grimsley are all land locked and really can't be expanded.

We continue to spend money on new programs, academies etc that don't add many seats, and some take about seats (classrooms for labs, kitchens etc)

Although money is needed for construction, we can't continue to pass bonds in this county until we have some accountability from our school board and superintendent!

Things must change!!

EG Parent

High Point can definitely feel your pain of having maps drawn with a prominent middle finger in the middle.

EG parent,

Be careful. You will be labeled a racist. Any time a parent comes forth against current bus routes, or asks questions about current maps, or tries to find logic in school zones, they will be labeled a racist.

Now EG Parent, I have no idea of your ethnicity, I'm just warning you. You see, if you are white in Guilford County, you are NOT allowed to complain about education. You must just be happy with what your child is receiving and tolerate it.

Now on the other hand, if you are black in Guilford County, then you get whatever you ask for. Just ask Deena Hayes, Dot Kearns, Walter Childs, Marti Sykes, or Susan Mendenhell. They will agree. In fact, from what I hear, it takes only about TEN minorities to start any new innovative program or busing schedule in Guilford County.

Marti, will support any program that keep's African Americans away from HER daughters school!

Dear Counting,

Don't the new school board members take office on December 1?

If so, then it's

91 days and counting...........

91...Whoopeeeeee.

I have given up daily counting though. Its just too much stress.

I just cant wait to not have to look at Susan red face Mendenhall and (s)Marti the school board Scrooge Sykes anymore.

Its KILLLLLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

EG PARENT

Sure sound like you might have a fire code violation at your school cafeteria. Does the fire marshall ever come to inspect? The Rhino reported he was at Central this past week because of overcrowding on the second and third floors?

I wonder if there is some authority that oversees the maximum number of students that are safely allowed to ride a school bus at one time? Don't city buses post a specific number on a sign? Would county buses come under DOT rules?

TERP

I believe new school board members start in January? Does the board even meet in December?

According to the BOE meeting minutes, on Dec 7, 2004 (the first December meeting of 2004), they administered the oath to new board members and said goodbye to those leaving.

The first BOE meeting this December is December 5th. I think this is when they will give Susie and Marti their little plaques, thank them for their service, and send them on their merry and gay way.

So, Susan gets to represent District 2 for 4 days in December, 30 days in November, 31 days in October (including Halloween) and counting today, 29 days in September. I get a grand total of 94 days, but I'm open to comments and suggestions.

I have a question!!

Will they be doing anything special again this Halloween? I loved their costumes last year.

And I have a comment. Susan hasn't represented High Point yet, so saying that she'll represent for 94 more days is stretching the truth a bit.

What does anyone think of a school that forces diversity? At Southwest middle you can't sit with your friends at lunch. You are assigned a seat. My son sits with two other white boys, two African American and one Indian boy.

THEY HAVE TO SIT TOGETHER!

The long arm of Dot Kearns reaches strange places.

I don't think it's all that unusual to have an assigned table to eat at in middle school, especially in the ones that are overcrowded. I am not saying I agree with it. Are you saying that they have been assigned this group of students based on race? Or is that just 6 kids in his class during lunch?

Well if it were up to me, I'd have all students in all Guilford County schools in assigned seats. I would have assigned seats on the bus, in homeroom, in music, in line to go to the bathroom, and it would ALWAYS be black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white, etc.

Of course you couldn't do that at Dudley, Northwest, and other schools. You would run out of either black or white. But that's what I'd do . Yep, black, white, black, white...

I'm shocked that Guilford county Schools are not doing this already. One would think with Diverstiy as their #1 Goal that it would already be happening. I'm actually shocked that Deena has not brought this up at a school board meeting. It needs to be done NOW.

Debora, my son has to sit on a table of six with these specific children.
In my opinion its just another DoTerry Grearns tactic to try and force them to all to get along. Why can't this happen natually? I am just wondering if I should sue those XX or not?
I am fed up with this!@#@#@#@#@#.

Dudley Lunch line...Black,Black,Black....
NW lunch line.....White,White,White....
SW lunch line last year...White,Black,White,Black
SW lunch line this year...White,Black,Black,white,Black,Black....
Andrews last year...Black,Black,Black....
Andrews this year...Black,Black,Black...

@#@$$%$#@$

LunchLD

"Andrews this year...Black, Black, Black...."

More small academies for Andrews were mentioned at the last school board meeting. Does this pattern sound familiar?

Bus black students out. Create more empty seats. Buy land for another building. Ask for bond money for OTHER schools. Switch bond funds to create more empty seats for a black school. Redistrict MORE smart white students in. Buy another building off site in a hurry. Send more black students out to an academy. Create more empty seats. Redistrict more higher socioeconomic neighborhoods past their closest school. Bus more white students in.

Black students get bused. White students move or go private. White students don't come.

Back to....

Black, black, black. Build more academies. Bus more students out........Ask for more bond money....

Same MO,

You got it man! You have it EXACTLY! You must be on the board of education!

You have the Formula for Failure in Guilford County schools! But how many times must they replicate the same failures before they see the light?

Darn,

Another disappointment... I just read today's headlines that "Schools get Life-saving devices".. While I whole-heartedly agree with the efforts to equip every school with AED's, I was excited for a minute that the headline meant that another life-saving device would be added to each school--an education...

Drats! Maybe someday...