Bus Evacuations: Pointless

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May 19, 2009
Filed under Our Opinion

Fire drills, bad-weather drills, shelter and place, expeditions across the school for tardy passes, TAKS testing, etc. Like our list of annoying interruptions from class isn’t long enough, now twice a year the entire school is put on hold so we can practice the extremely complicated task of pulling a bus emergency latch and stepping about two feet to the ground.

A large portion of students don’t even ride buses, or if they do it is only a few times a year. This is especially true here at Legacy, where many students who used the open transfer opportunity when the school opened are not on the bus routes. Any student that drives also has their time wasted.

The bus safety drills are also conveniently scheduled close to the end of each semester; the time when homework, final exams, and that project you’ve been putting off for three weeks all piles up. Second semester has already lost two weeks to TAKS and AP tests. Losing yet another part of a class period takes away even more instruction time. For some this loss can mean the difference between passing and failing.

This time is wasted for an exceedingly simple task. Maybe we should take some class time to have a safety lesson on walking down stairs, or how to turn a door handle. Surely the State of Texas wouldn’t want to insult our intelligence.

In short, the bus safety drills are an unnecessary waste of time. The instructions for exiting the emergency doors are written on the doors themselves. Perhaps the State legislature should put more funding into Language Arts.

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Comments

6 Responses to “Bus Evacuations: Pointless”

Drew Gassiot Says:
May 24th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
It’s almost degrading. Students exit a bus almost every time the get on one. So why is a class on how to exit the bus necessary?
Blake Burch Says:
May 24th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Drew, you must really want some cash for iTunes. Mass commenting these stories. I commend you.

Normally, the time spent in school after AP exams goes to waste as it is. Teachers may give projects, used to suck up the remaining class time, but besides that, there is hardly anything for us to do. Few students in my realm of the school even end up taking finals. So in reality, the State Legislature is only wasting our wasted time, and that isn’t all that bad. After all, if it wasn’t the end of the school year, I highly doubt you, or anyone else for that matter, would be complaining about getting out of class to learn how to do something completely obvious.
Mallorie Carney Says:
May 26th, 2009 at 6:42 am
I feel like the state almost wants our intelligence to decrease. I know its crazy, but most kids do have a little bit of common sense.
Brittany Sutton Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I understand why we have them at the end of the year, because everything’s practically over with already, but seriously? how many times are we going to ride a bus in the time left with school-two or three weeks? if you’re going to get us out of class for it, might as well be right after first semester exams, when we haven’t started any new stuff yet.
Tina Says:
June 24th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Do you realize it takes less than 5 minutes to fully consume a bus a flames. How fast do you think children can read, understand and administer these exiting instructions. I would think you would be more concerned about NOT letting your child burn to death.
Drew Gassiot Says:
September 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Tina, it takes less than that amount of time for students to exit the bus through the front door when the bus isn’t on fire. And not to resurrect old conversations but Blake, I hate stopping what you are doing to go down three stories and learn to get off a bus. And I started commenting before they mentioned the itunes thing, which I haven’t heard anything about since.