Since moving to Connecticut, a couple of things about schools up here have baffled me, a product of the public school system in
Memphis, TN. One of those items has been school scheduling — the sheer number of odd little holidays that students up here have,
which cause the school year to run into June (and not in the year-round-schooling sense). Another of those items has been in how
much more use school busses see up here than in other areas where I lived.
Perhaps I’m more aware of school busses up here because of the nature of my commute, versus that of prior jobs/places I’ve lived.
However, an article in yesterday’s
Hartford Courant may help explain my observation:
The state Supreme Court has ruled that municipalities are not obligated to bus preschool children to charter schools
within their communities, because state law requires transportation only for those students in grades kindergarten or
above.
I wonder if there’s an implication here that Connecticut requires a higher level of transportation than does other states. It seems
like just about every schoolkid around here rides the bus, whereas in other places where I’ve lived, it seems that only children who
had no other transportation options rode the bus.
This pondering, of course, leads to other questions, such as how much are we taxpayers paying for this mandate? Perhaps this makes
sense in conservation terms…but I’m not sure that I’m happy about chipping in a few bucks just so a well-off parent doesn’t have
to arrange transportation for his/her child to/from school.