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Awesome
This more than replaces the income generated by the Winthrop Tower so we don't have to build it so high. Let's just use this money instead of selling our soul to the highest bidder.
That old garage?
Is "our soul"?
No
But Boston Common is!
So it is ok for junkies to
So it is ok for junkies to trash the common but god forbid a building casts a shadow on it for two hours a day in the winter.
Yeah
Sure. Whatever.
Non-sequitur much or just an axe to grind?
I have an idea
Get rid of busing and let kids walk to a nearby school. Boom, millions saved.
And the millions spent each
And the millions spent each year on busing can be spent on schools, teachers, supplies, etc.
Yup, how fair.
let rich kids only interact with rich kids and the poor kids only ever interact with poor kids. Why would we want to prepare kids for ever leaving their bubbles? Their parents are clearly too scared to.
not that i disagree with you,
not that i disagree with you, but this is precisely the way it is now. BPS is segregated by ethnicity and economic status from the surrounding school districts and within.
Rich kids
As in the ones who don't go to BPS and attend private schools? Most families with the means avoid BPS less the exam schools.
Fair?
You then go on to talk about life preparation! Life isn't fair in the slightest bit.
What about METCO, it's that "fair?"
Yes, it is
The fact is, Metco is a two-way street. Minority Boston kids get a chance at a different education, AND, here comes the important part, mostly white, upper-class white kids get to go to school with kids who are not like them.
How can you support Metco but
How can you support Metco but oppose charter schools? Just like charter schools, Metco also siphons away the brightest students and dollars from BPS to suburban communities.
About the outcomes of Metco programs, the graduation rates and college attainment of Metco students are higher than their counterparts in BPS. However, we do not know how much of that is due to higher caliber students and how much of that is due to better schools.
In addition, the diversity goals of Metco program have been illusive. See the article in Boston Globe.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/07/23/half-century-later-diversit...
Better and fairer system compared to Metco would be to build a couple of new magnet schools in Boston so that the brighter students and $$ stay in BPS. In addition, the students would not have to wake up at 5 am to be shipped to distant suburban schools that will not embrace you.
If the suburban towns want diversity in their schools, they should encourage affordable housing instead of NIMBYsm.
How can I support Metco?
We know the kids will be going to good schools. Way more of a crap shoot with charters.
The fact is...
there are very few "rich kids" in the system at all these days. I hear you on not wanting to increase segregation in the schools but the fact is that it happens already to such a huge degree that I honestly think a refocus on neighborhood schools will help rather than hurt. The unpredictability of where your kids are going to go is unsettling for all parents and having their school all the way across the city makes getting involved and committed that much harder. The money spent in busing is a whole other issue, but I'd rather see the focus and the $ put on strengthening schools in ALL neighborhoods.
But it was precisely because
But it was precisely because the courts determined that the Boston School Committee could not be trusted to allocate resources equitably in all neighborhoods that busing was put in place. Garrity concluded that there was a history going back at least 20 years of a concerted effort to segregate the schools and to fund them unequally. That was more than forty years ago, and maybe things have changed, but the arguments you're making now were made then, though perhaps with less pure motives. I think abandoning busing without addressing the question of why it was necessary in the first place would risk a return to a time when the black students of Boston could walk to neighborhhood schools that weren't worth attending.
risk a return to a time when
Vs. now where taxpayers pay a lot of money to bus them to schools that aren't worth attending.
Well
it is pretty well established that before desegregation some schools were a lot better than others. More money per pupil, smaller classes. etc. Are you saying that the effect of desegregation has been to make them all equally bad, without improving any of them?
The effect of desegregation
Has been to increase segregation.
Re establishing neighborhood schools is the only way to ensure
that the entire city will benefit from growth and progress. Schools are where people meet, friendships grow and ownership of community start. Go to any suburb and you'll find the local school that has parents that become active in the community because of the local school. Local schools are the conduit to community participation.
What is disturbing to me, is progressives that decry all forms of discrimination, don't believe minority parents are capable of having the same cause and effect on community through local schools. Fear of re-segragation. What do we have now? How can a single mother with three kids in three different Boston Public Schools, in three different neighborhoods become involved? She can't, but why change something that isn't working when you can just change a bus route.
The hyperbole doesn't help.
My wife and I both travel for work, and have a young child in school and a younger child pre-school. When one parent goes away for a M-F trip, the other barely treads water -- and that's with the weekend before spent doing laundry, cooking, and prepping for the week, and with relatively flexible working schedules and enough money to buy out of problems.
A single mother with three kids? She's not going to be involved much in anything outside work and home even if her three kids all go to the same school.
Thank you for making
my point. I guess I'd rather be hyperbolic than out of touch with reality.
That single mother travels for work too. On the bus. Doesn't drive a BMW or sip latte in the South end between working mothers group get togethers, dog walking or yoga. Oh, and work....
Whoa, hold on there.
Whoa, hold on there.
As a single mother, you'd be surprised what we can do. School involvement? Of course!
Don't cut us off at the knees because of your preconceptions.
Great point. Schools are not
Great point. Schools are not factories where kids can be shipped to different schools, receive grades and graduate. Schools are about friendship, community, neighborhoods, and learning.
Given the dollar amount spent per student and the outcomes (graduation, etc), the current BPS system is a failure. Many of the suburbs spend similar dollar per student but are able to achieve much higher outcomes. There was a reason why we needed to bus students sixty years ago. However, a lot has changed since then including technology, demographics, economy, job market, etc. At the least, there needs to be a study on whether the current system was able to achieve its goals and whether it will best serve the students going forward.
Really? Do you know anything about BPS?
Why are you comparing BPS with suburban districts? Do you actually think that is a fair comparison? Boston is widely regarded as one of the best urban school districts in the country! Educate yourself before you spread lies!
Kids spending so much time
Kids spending so much time everyday being bused and waiting for bus is an enormous waste of time in addition to money. Also, talk about pollution and traffic caused by transporting students to far away schools. These kids should be learning new skills, engaged in arts and music or playing sports instead of sitting in the traffic.
Please
This is Boston, not LA. Nobody's spending hours on a bus, we're not that big a city.
According to this recent Globe article,
Metco kids are spending hours on the bus:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/07/23/half-century-later-diversity...
Yea but the kids who live in duxbury.....
Who go to Dexter or Roxbury Latin also have to sit on busses....
Yes, Metco kids spend a lot of time on the bus
One of my neighbor's kids went to an out-of-town school through Metco and had to be at her bus stop in Hyde Park at some ungodly hour. But I was talking about BPS schools; most Boston kids are not in Metco.
This is Boston, fuck LA!
This is Boston, fuck LA!
You can still spend more than
You can still spend more than an hour on a bus to get from one end of the city to the other.
Though I have no idea how many kids live in Hyde Park and go to school in Orient Heights.
Yes, you can ...
But at least at the elementary and middle-school levels, that doesn't happen. No kid from Hyde Park is going to be assigned to a school in Charlestown. It's different at the high school level, but there's an element of choice there - a kid in Charlestown would likely have to choose to go to school in Hyde Park (and then he'd have to figure out how to get there on the T).
And kids wouldn't be so obese
And kids wouldn't be so obese if they were allowed to walk to school. But fear mongering has caused society to deem it unacceptable to let your kid walk somewhere even though violent crime has been decreasing in this country for decades.
In all honesty....
I wondered what would have happened if Tito Jackson said he was going to end busing in Boston. I think that might get him elected. Even if it were impossible for a mayor to do, I'm somewhat surprised he doesn't even throw it out there. Instead (because the city just got the police contract done without anyone even noticing once Tito announced his intent to run) Tito has to use platforms that I don't really think he believes in....
You can't end busing in Boston
For starters, some neighborhoods just don't have enough seats in their local schools. Ask West Roxbury.
Boston also has a ton of specialized programs (think special education and programs for non-English-speakers) that just cannot be offered at every single school in the system. Those kids need buses.
And let's not forget that BPS is legally required to provide school-bus service for charter schools, all of which are open citywide.
So no matter what BPS does, it has to provide buses - and I'm going to bet you the cost of busing the remaining kids (and remember - BPS is now buying CharlieCards starting in seventh grade) would be far, far less than building the new schools/classrooms that would be needed to get all those BPS kids off buses.
There's another reason
It isn't safe for kids to walk when shoveling requirements aren't enforced, when sidewalks are not maintained or do not exist, and when drivers aren't ticketed frequently for ignoring crosswalks and speed limits.
See Also: kids hit when state/city did not bother to clear public walkways.
The fear of the boogyman snatching kids is largely irrational and statistically miniscule, but the fear of letting kids navigate questionable walking conditions and deal with insane drivers is real.
Thanks, suburban woman
You'd be surprised how many BPS students walk at least part of their trip to school, be it the middle and high school kids that take the T or the elementary school kids that walk to their bus stop.
But hey, the next time there is snowfall, feel free to hop in your Subaru and track down the unshoveled sidewalks in the big bad city. There is even an app you can use to document violations.
Sure, dude who lives further from city hall than I do
Now, please point out where I said that NO students walk to school at all? Because, frankly dude who lives and works further from City Hall than I do, I never said that.
I merely pointed out the reason that many PARENTS won't ALLOW their kids to walk.
There are other reasons that are true in most cities, such as not living within walking distance of a school because of the systematic closure of neighborhood schools.
BTW: Medford isn't a suburb - it is a city. Learn your history, please.
You don't live in Boston
You live in one of the municipalities outside of the main city that happens to have the city form of government.
And as one who walks the actual sidewalks that Boston school children walk and do it even when there is 4 feet of snow out there, I assure you that Boston sidewalks are probably better cared for than the sidewalks of Medford, Melrose, Woburn, and all the other "cities" whose residents know what's best for Boston.
How many BPS students live on your block?
This again
Sometimes Swirly seems rational, but this chip she has on her shoulder about living in a suburb is too funny.
Like say Hyde Park - the horror
How coukd anyone who lives so far from city hall possibly understand Boston better than someone who lives in say Somerville Cambridge or Meffah. Nobody from Hyde Park ciuld ever be qualified to understand the city to be, ohh, say mayor. Someone from there would make a terrible mayor and never get elected, much less re-elected should they rise to power accidentally thru the city council presidency.
Well
If Beacon Hill just let everyone from the greater Boston area vote for mayor of Boston without letting their municipalities be annexed, we wouldn't have to worry about people from Hyde Park or Dorchester being elected mayor. We would have been lucky and got someone like Michael McGlynn.
Well I guess they are using Peter Pan buses.....
for those along the commuter rail route when this Comm. Ave project goes down this week because the MBTA buses would cost too much....
(I'm sure there are more details than what I'm giving)
Volume
Given the number of riders on that line it seems possible if not likely that the MBTA doesn't have enough busses and drivers available. Even if they have the available vehicles you can't just bring in outside drivers.
?
Wait, isn't it just a small portion of the line from Blandford to Babcock? That could be done easily with 4-8 MBTA busses in a loop and they would come even more frequently than the train does.
They said commuter rail, not
They said commuter rail, not green line... sure, you could maybe handle the B line busing with just a handful of buses, but that becomes a lot harder once you include Worcester line passengers.
Let Them Eat Cake
You should always live in the town you work in.
Worcester Line substitute busing
is just between Boston Landing (New Balance) and Reservoir station. It's not the whole rail line. It's also only on Saturday and Sunday, 7/29 - 7/30 & 8/5 - 8/6 .
I never said it was for the
I never said it was for the whole rail line. But you still have to handle the whole rail line's passengers.
I don't think the "in part by
I don't think the "in part by laying off drivers" lament is going to make anybody blink an eye, as long as the new bus routes are faster than the old ones.
Interesting...
not one comment so far about the drivers that will be out of jobs.
The BPS isn't a jobs program.
The BPS isn't a jobs program.
The MBTA can help alleviate traffic.
One simple solution would be to allow Boston school buses to pull into JFK, Ashmont and Forest Hills stations to drop off the kids safely instead of dropping kids off in the middle of the street causing traffic jams risking kids lives as they have to dodge oncoming cars. Other schools such as Catholic schools such as CM, and colleges such as U-Mass Boston and Curry College are allowed to utilized the bus ways to drop off and pick up students which raises the question of why the BPS Buses are banned from the MBTA stations?
BPS buses are banned from
BPS buses are banned from making pickups at MBTA stations? Never heard that before.
excluded way
MBTA bus ways are excluded ways and any vehicle not authorized is subject to towing and ticketing by the Transit Police. For some reason Boston school buses are not authorized to utilize the bus ways.
Technically any bus besides
Technically any bus besides MBTA buses is banned from the busways.
This is something the T has studied before, but unsurprisingly, nothing came of it. I remember a study regarding letting the MASCO buses use the busway at Ruggles showed something like a 6 second increase in average delay getting buses through or something trivial like that.
I think the T is over-restrictive about busways in general. Any bus belonging to a governmental or semi-governmental entity should be allowed to use them.
And then of course there's idiotic things like posting the standard busway do not enter signs at the entrance to the parking lot at Sullivan... there is no legal way to enter that parking lot, since both entrances are signed as busways.
non-MBTA buses in busways
Brockton Area Transit buses use the Ashmont station busway, and the (private) Go Bus to New York City uses the busway in Alewife station. And of course the UMass shuttle bus uses the JFK/UMass busway.
Now that I think about it, I
Now that I think about it, I seem to recall seeing MASCO buses in the JFK busway as well...
Maybe it boils down to other entities having to pay for access at specific stations? I'm genuinely curious if anyone knows the actual answer to this.