2009-08-09 Assigned Bus Seats

Too many of childhood’s small freedoms and joys seem to be disappearing as children’s lives become more and more regimented. While I have many examples in mind, I’ll focus here on one which I hope could still be changed.

This spring there was a bus incident in which a student whose parent had an emergency situation wrote a note for her daughter to ride another bus. The bus driver forced this student to get off the bus in an unfamiliar location. I believe this improper behavior by a single driver may have been one of the instigating factors for two new policies that will be implemented this school year in Indian Prairie District 204.

The first is that all students in grades 6-12 must show a school ID that indicates they belong on a particular bus before boarding.

The second is that all students in K-8 will have assigned bus seats. This is being done for “student safety and management.” While I commend safety as a priority, after being in contact with the school board and administration about this very issue I have not yet heard of a single example of how assigning seats improves safety. The students will have a few days at the beginning of the school year to choose their seats, and then must sit in those same seats for the entire semester. This leaves the bus driver in charge of making sure that children are in their assigned seats in addition to safely transporting our children to and from school.

Assigned seating has been used in the past on some buses as a means of dealing with problem behaviors. Kids who don’t behave well on the bus may have been required to sit up front near the driver. For bus routes that have many behavioral issues, assigned seating can make sense as a solution to that problem, or can be used as a threat to help encourage better behavior.

Children who are new to the bus may not have made friends yet when the bus seats are assigned and when they do make friends on the route, won’t get to sit with them until the following semester. Kindergarteners may ride with a sibling the first few days as they get the hang of being a bus-rider, but then both siblings may have trouble finding other seats a few days into the school year. They could wind up riding together for the entire semester. While some kids would be happy with this situation, others would not.

Will students who ride the bus only a few times during the school year have an assigned seat? Will the drivers give permission for students to change their assigned seats if they have a good reason? How strictly will this policy be enforced, and how?

In middle school there is a wide variance as to which students are actually on the bus on any given trip due to the many before and after school activities the students may be involved in. The seatmates of students who are not on the bus due to school activities will then be left sitting alone, while other students do the same, unable to move to another seat to sit together if they’d like. Some students will prefer this, while others might like to socialize with some of their other friends for the bus ride. Regardless of the length of the bus ride, it’s still one of the rare social times that our students may have in an ever more strictly controlled school day.

Somehow my kids have survived riding buses in 204 since 1995, as have thousands of other children, and serious incidents have been rare. Bad behavior on the bus can be dealt with in a variety of manners other than assigning seats for all students, and this new policy ensures that whomever is unfortunate enough to sit near someone who behaves badly will be stuck sitting near them every day for the whole semester. Children’s friendships are often rapidly evolving and it makes sense to let kids chose whom to sit with on a daily basis. Children may even make new friends by sitting with different people throughout the year.

Our district is implementing new programs with an emphasis on social-emotional learning, and it seems like navigating relationships and free time on the bus would be a great opportunity for students to develop in this area outside of the program implemented in school.

Yes, kids need to be orderly during the school day when they are being taught, but let’s give them a little freedom to grow and become more responsible during the times of day when this is not required. Let’s allow some fun where we can since there is already plenty of time that children must be quiet and attentive, and only assign bus seats when necessary.

I ask that District 204 administrators please reconsider this new policy.