A Few Lessons From Yesterday’s Severe Weather

Photo: Audrey Ward

I was out and about yesterday afternoon, bouncing between meetings at Highland Park Town Hall and University Park City Hall.

A few stray observations:

– The lack of buses in HPISD compounds emergency situations like yesterday. I’m not saying it isn’t a wise idea most days of the year, but when the carpool lane stretches from HPMS to Mockingbird Lane (and onto Mockingbird Lane), you have a problem.

– I would never live within a baseball’s throw of Turtle Creek. Even driving by at 3:30 p.m. (before the strongest rains), it looked like The River Wild.

– I miss being in high school. That’s Jacob Weisfeld in the photo above, sitting in the middle of Lakeside Park. People would probably call the cops if they saw a 27-year-old doing that.

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6 thoughts on “A Few Lessons From Yesterday’s Severe Weather

  • April 5, 2012 at 10:12 am
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    Great photo. I have truly never understood the school bus scenario. Do they drop off kids at each one of their houses? How do they know which kids are supposed to get on which bus? How do they know which kids are supposed to be on the bus or not on any given day? If the buses run routes of major streets and the kids get dropped off on corners within a block or two of their houses, why are they not just riding the Dart bus and saving the districts money for more teachers? Are the School buses free? Since when did the school have a responsibility to get your kids to and from their venue? HPISD redistricted when I was in elementary school and switched us from Hyer (5 blocks away) to Bradfield (24 blocks away) and their solution was for us to ride the Dart bus. Was not a big deal.

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  • April 5, 2012 at 2:18 pm
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    Avid Reader has obviously led a sheltered life.

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  • April 5, 2012 at 5:08 pm
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    Wow, Avid. Sheltered doesn’t even begin to describe it. Th Park Cities is one of the few areas where all kids get door-to-door service to school via their parents.

    Bus routes require kids walking (usually) to a certain bus stop by a certain time; the bus takes the kids to school, picking up more kids along the way. At school the kids have to locate and board the correct bus, get off at the correct stop and walk home. For most kids it is the first time they take much responsibility for themselves, in my opinion. And for most parents it is the first step to letting go.

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  • April 6, 2012 at 9:41 am
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    Sure I was sheltered, just like everyone else who grows up in UP/HP. I’ll concede that; just not in the ways you two are describing. I was never given “door-to-door service to school via [my] parents”; they both worked full time my entire HPISD career and I walked, road my bike, or took the DART bus to school (which as I am writing this, the DART seems less sheltered than a school bus full of other kids on it’s face, but opinions are opinions). So…..aside from my lack of knowledge of the school bus route technicalities; I am still looking for an answer regarding why any public school is responsible for the mere action of getting anyone’s kids to and from their venue and also the cost associated.

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  • April 6, 2012 at 9:15 pm
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    HPISD had school bus service through most of the 1980’s. NO ONE used it. You’d have a bus for 40 passengers with 3 people on it. It ran a set route dropped kids on designated corners, not at their homes.

    It was ultimately unsuccessful due to a combination of 1) scattered after-school activity schedules and 2) that fact that it was “totally uncool” to take the bus.

    To answer the carpool lane issue, I would recommend actually CARPOOLING.

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