this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Best you start walking now. School could be a mere 60 miles/96K one way from your home, (even if you live "in town" it's still a 2 mile walk to school). Oh and the temperature outside is -35C this morning. Good luck! And yes, where I live that's how far we need to bus students due to low population densities. And also yes, the winter time temperatures do get that low - it's been around -15F/-26C every morning for the last 2 weeks. Toss in a nice amount of wind, and frostbite can occur in a mere handful of minutes on bare skin.
School buses also ensure all students arrive at the same time. Usually a 10 minute window. It also limits possible accidents, with young children in particular, crossing uncontrolled intersections in busy neighborhoods. Since school buses drop their passengers off at the door.
Lots of reasons to use school buses because not everyone lives within walking distance in quiet places or somewhere warm.
Schools is canceled if it's -20C for 1-6 grade and -25C for higher grades here, I'm assuming that is also a thing in the US. And I have walked to school at -25C before only to walk back because it was closed, I think I was in 3th grade. It's not some deadly arctic weather you make it out to be, just dress properly.
Also all of that is pretty irrelevant since I was saying you should have public transit that people can just use, including kids for getting to school, not that kids have to walk the whole way to school. Not just special busses children use twice a day.
That is not a thing in the US - there would be too much cancelled school in many of the northern states.
How? My country is like high enough on the map to be on the same line as central Canada and we get like a week or two of -25C or more plus some random cold snaps.
Also that's completely beside the point since my whole point was to have normal bus lanes instead of a school bus.
Shrug, I'm not a metrologist to be able to explain everything that goes into why it's normal to have -25C days in the winter here. Our cold snaps are down to -35-40C, not -25C.
I didn't respond to your other point for a reason. I only responded to your 'I assume this is a thing in the US' to correct your assumption. Do with that what you will.
Nope, school does NOT get closed here because it's too cold. If it did, we would seldom have a school day. A blizzard might have school be a couple hours late, icy road conditions will get school closed. But cold? Only once were all the schools closed when the windchill hit -75C about 15 or 20 years ago. It was unprecedented and caused a lot of controversy. And yes, we know how to dress properly here - it's below freezing 6+ months out of a year. But, while it's a mere -26C right now, the windchill is currently -35C. It's foolish to expect a 5 or 6 year old to wait 15 or 20 minutes in the open for a public bus or to walk a kilometer plus to school. Frostbite can happen in as little as 10 minutes to exposed skin. Dedicated school buses avoid those possibilities.
And due to the low population density, there is NO public transportation here. And we do need to bus some children 95km one way everyday. Otherwise they would need to travel well over 100km one way to the next closest school. The average bus route here is about 30-40km one way.
And if you REALLY want to save on transportation, you should keep all the children at home and just have them attend classes on-line. After all, we have the technology to do so, (and did so during covid). But be mindful of the tanking educational scores. Turns out children really suck at showing up for on-line classes..........
Not everyone lives in a nice warm place like you with all the amenities you personally expect to have.