Elementary School Students Are Sharing The Bus With Teenagers
By: Maria Vallejo
Updated: August 31, 2007
For some students in Bossier Parish, a ride to school may take about forty five minutes. And Bus Driver say because resources are limited elementary school students have to share the bus with older students."We have to cover a lot of miles. It would be a lot of expense to send the same buses up the same up that many miles." Some parents are concerned about this and bus drivers say they should be."Driving a bus you can't know about everything going on in the back of the bus or even in the front of a bus. You hear about things later." But school administrators assure us there is no need to be concerned. They tell us some of their buses are even equipped with security cameras and at some point they plan to put them on every bus. Another thing parent are concerned about is the heat on the bus. So equipped with a temperature gun we got on a bus the temperature was one hundred twenty five degrees and that's without any children on the bus. The only thing that students can do to stay cool is open some of windows and bus drivers says sometimes that's still not enough. "There is about three students that have got to have water or they will die, so that's what I do for my kids." These children are students with special needs. And just in case the bus gets too hot for them Mark Norris carries water and ice on his bus. The Bossier Parish school system is going to test a pilot program in about nine months some buses for special needs children will be equipped with air conditioning. Once they figure out how expensive that is they may look into air conditioning for the rest of the buses. But there is no guarantee.
