It seems to me that school buses are a privilege and not a right and if punk kids aren't behaving, the privilege gets rescinded. I live in Minneapolis now and while the city schools here have a similar arrangement with the local public transit agency, problems are much less of an issue. Part of this is undoubtedly the fact that Mpls has rigid attendance boundaries, and part is that there are special routes serving the high schools. Moreover, since there isn't one transit center where every route connects downtown, there's not a centralized location for kids to fight at.
Other factors include the fact that there's a Transit Police department whose only job is maintaining order on regional transit vehicles, and in downtown, there's an innovative ambassador program where paid staff walk the streets of downtown, giving direction and picking up litter, and have the ability to radio police where needed. Rochester needs more eyes on the street and more security, as well as more jobs and hope for poor minorities. Because if these kids can't behave on the RTS bus now, it's only a matter of time before they're plotting how to saw up the back of their prison cell up at Clinton.
Re: “Busing vote delayed”
It seems to me that school buses are a privilege and not a right and if punk kids aren't behaving, the privilege gets rescinded. I live in Minneapolis now and while the city schools here have a similar arrangement with the local public transit agency, problems are much less of an issue. Part of this is undoubtedly the fact that Mpls has rigid attendance boundaries, and part is that there are special routes serving the high schools. Moreover, since there isn't one transit center where every route connects downtown, there's not a centralized location for kids to fight at.
Other factors include the fact that there's a Transit Police department whose only job is maintaining order on regional transit vehicles, and in downtown, there's an innovative ambassador program where paid staff walk the streets of downtown, giving direction and picking up litter, and have the ability to radio police where needed. Rochester needs more eyes on the street and more security, as well as more jobs and hope for poor minorities. Because if these kids can't behave on the RTS bus now, it's only a matter of time before they're plotting how to saw up the back of their prison cell up at Clinton.