I have some concerns about the discontinuation of the bus service from Garlic Creek to Elm Grove Elementary.
It’s great to have a bridge between Elm Grove and Garlic Creek, but I would prefer it more if it were drivable. I wish I had realized sooner that the buses would stop or I would have opposed the bridge.
My five-year-old son starts kindergarten this fall and I was planning to put him on the bus so I could avoid sitting in line at the school to drop him off every morning and risk being late to work.
He is never going walk across a bridge that is at least a 20-minute walk (for me) from my house and then whatever time it would take to walk through the Elm Grove neighborhood; my son could easily double that time with his short legs. My wife and I both have jobs so we can’t walk him to school.
The bridge is great for families with a stay at home parent who can kill a couple hours but it’s no use for families with two working parents if its purpose was to remove the bus route.
Maybe I am alone in my concerns or more upset than I should be, but my child will never cross that bridge alone. The school is locked until 7:20 a.m. so I would never get back fast enough to get to work on time either. Instead I’ll drive my kid into the traffic jam in front Elm Grove every morning along with every other two-working parent family who previously avoided this by using the bus.
An alternative that would help parents, like me, who relied on the buses for more than just a safe way to get the kids to school, could be opening the school at 7 a.m. so parents can spread out drop off times. That would be early enough to avoid any problems with most parents getting to work and avoid a mob of unsupervised children standing in front of the school before it opens.
A concerned kindergarten parent,
TL Jeffcoat
Buda
