FRIDAY!!!! WOOOOOO. Dec 1
It's been an awesome week. Except for that garbage weather out there today. Am I the only one who thinks that bus drivers are the biggest pansies? The roads aren't even bad and they cancel the buses? What the hell man. What do you guys think?
Oh yea...Drive safe everyone.
8am Shoutout: Claude Bourque
Sun Online: newton
Sun Paper code: chimera
Combo code: chimeranewton
24 hr code: herring
Jackfm
Community of the Day: Mississippi Mills
Roll Call: Craig St. Germain
Bonus Code: mud (1,000pts)
27 comments:
I'm guessing that the bus drivers aren't happy either, most of them are part time employees who drive to supplement their incomes. It's the schoolboards that cancelled bus service
Then if they think it's doable, they should speak up.
My fiance's mother is a bus driver and I harass her all the time when they act like candy asses and don't drive. Her response is "It's a free day off"
Well it's a pain to make arrangements for the kids on days like this. Darn, now I have to leave work early today!
School bus drivers don't have a choice - the board cancels the buses, not the drivers. The boards don't just consider the conditions at 6 am when many of the buses are warming up and preparing to pick up your kids, but also what the roads will be like at noon (Kindergarten) and at 2:30 pm when buses start picking up children again.
Don't knock the bus driver for appreciating the day off, either. Most get paid for 4 hours a day at $9-12 an hour, with no benefits or paid vacation days. They deal with up to 72 children ranging in age from 3 to 19, sometimes all on one bus.
When the board cancels buses for a "Snow Day", the driver gets paid the minimum amount for the day. Bus drivers do not get paid for PD days, though.
As a former school bus driver, and the parent of another (who drives a rural route school bus), I would rather be off the road on a freezing rain day, than trying to get all the kids home safely on dangerous roads.
Safety first!
Susan, you have made some excellent observations. We should never compromise the safety of our children.
BAH!!!
We practically needed a storm of Apocalyptic proportions when I was in Highschool which wasn't all that long ago.
So, Free stuff is great, I assume you have your B licence and drive a big yellow bus on rural roads, or on narrow city streets between parked cars? :-) I think that all parents should try driving one, just once, on a closed course.
One of my bus routes ambled through Centrepointe, in and out of all the crescents, 4 times a day, for two schools. It was a real challenge to get a 45 ft bus around the corners on a slippery day when people parked their cars (legally) near the corners. Another took me from Kanata, to Bells Corners, to Bayshore, then downtown to drop off my wheelchair-bound kids (smaller white handicab bus). They were in the bus for 2 hours in good weather each way - a snow storm or freezing rain sometimes pushed that to 3 or more hours.
My daughter's present rural route has her turning around in farm driveways (back into the driveway and drive back out). The Russell/Embrun area that she covers has a lot of deep ditches at the edges of narrow driveways. She does an elementary school, followed by a mixed elementary/high school. Both bus loads are full - 60+ passengers.
Her board (Upper Canada) didn't cancel the buses this morning, but may send them out for early dismissal to keep them off the roads during rush hour. She brought her bus home and backed it into her farm driveway this morning just in case.
@ Susan
ITA with your statements. My daughter is on a rural route school bus and there was no way she was getting on a bus this morning whether they were cancelled or not. I find that sometimes they don't cancel the Ottawa buses because the roads in town are fine, but the road out by us are not. (We live near Almonte but still within Ottawa city limits). There have been a few days that she has stayed home when the buses are running and I feel bad for the drivers that have to be out on those roads. I think the school board should consider rural Ottawa residents when cancelling school buses...
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying that the roads aren't nearly as bad as they should be to warrant cancellation. All based on a forecast.
Last year it was forecast to be freezing rain on 1 or 2 occassions in the afternoon and they were cancelled.
Even my outlaw said it was stupidity to cancel. She even thinks that cancelling today was a dumb move so far.
Cancelling buses today was a joke. As far as all your rural route buses are concerned, my kid went to school today as I live in the Kemptville area and the North Grenville buses were not cancelled.
As far as the bus drivers are concerned, I know a couple and they actually think it's a joke that the buses get cancelled because now you have all these parents that have to drive their kids to school and pick them up. Personally, I would rather have the bus drivers transporting my kid around than most of the parents. Part of being a bus driver is knowing how to drive properly in these types of conditions. I have never driven a school bus but I have driven plenty of bigger vehicles and one thing I can say, after a while you get very good at driving them so I wouldn't be too concerned about buses having to back into driveways or situations like that.
At the rate we are going, we will have to get rid of summer holidays and give the kids the winter off!!!
12:00pm shout-out: Scott Brown
any on get the 8 pm shout out
8 p.m. Janet Desloges
Some of you may think it's a joke when buses are cancelled, but you're not the one driving. School bus drivers are underappreciated at any time of year - and to imply that they're "candy-asses" because the BOARD cancels buses is just rude.
My daughter's bus run covers 3 schools in Russell and Embrun. Because of downed power lines and trees, she was out there on slippery roads bringing kids home safely for 2.75 hours longer than normal. One teenager was dropped off with the firefighters on the wrong side of downed power lines to wait until they cleared the road so he could go home. The winds were trying to push the bus into the 10 ft deep ditches on some of the roads as she detoured around through Marvelville to get to her last drop-off - the normal route was closed.
You may have driven vehicles of similar length, but I bet none of them had 60+ kids inside. Kids aren't quiet - and the driver has to monitor them as well as the road. Kids don't always behave in a considerate fashion when they exit the bus - and the first snowfall is always an exciting time.
The danger isn't just in the driving, but in the traffic around the stops, the ability of other drivers to recognise and stop for the flashing lights, and the normal silliness of kids cooped up in a bus for 2 hours on the way home. Idiots on the road on a dry day run the lights - on an icy day it's even more dangerous.
Considering how the weather turned out, it was a good call IMO. Even if they were wrong, I'd rather be inconvenienced than to have one life lost.
Saturday, Nov. 2nd
Ottawa Sun newspaper code: righteous
Ottawa Sun on-line code: brothers
Combo code: righteousbrothers
Saturday, Dec. 2nd
Jackfm
stick (1,000pts)
homes (250pts)
wrap (250pts)
Sunday, Dec. 3rd
Ottawa Sun bonus code: evanescence
Monday, December 4th
Ottawa Sun On-line bonus code: arizona
monday dec. 4th
paper sun - SCOTTSDALE
online code - ARIZONA
combo code - SCOTTSDALEARIZONA
Monday, December 4th
24 hour newspaper bonus code: inversion
Monday, December 4th - limited time question (5:30-9:00am) 50pts
Do you think the Liberal party made the right choice for a new leader?
Monday, December 4th
Jackfm
bonus code: lunch (1,000pts)
Monday, Dec. 4th
8:00am shout-out: Leanna Marie Fernandes
Post a Comment