You would think that in a village where all the kids go to the same school, the bus situation would be a snap. Kids get on the bus in the morning, come to school and six hours later they get on the bus again and go home. But you would be wrong.
Sure, every once in a while, children do not want to get up and go to school. Some are chronically tardy. This is as true in Portland as it is in Togiak. But in Togiak, there is no backup system for kids who refuse to get up in time to catch the bus. There is no public transit bus system, there are no taxis, and the walk in most cases is 3 miles uphill. Sometimes parents are willing to bring the kids to school by car, or more likely, four wheeler, except for parents who work in the morning or don't have a car or a four wheeler or just don't feel like getting up either.
The buses are operated by a private company owned, I think, by the tribal council. There is a contract with the school and someday I would love to get a copy of it because it gives a whole lot of power to the buses and their drivers, very little to the school and none to the teachers. We truly are at the mercy of the bus.
For example, one day there was only one bus for pickup when usually there are two. The driver of the other bus was out of town or unwell or just didn't feel like driving that day. My students waited patiently for the bus to drop off all the primary little'uns, turn around and pick up the upper elementary kids. But when the bus returned, the driver got out, told the teachers of upper elementary that it was his break time and that our kids would have to wait until the high school bus riders were ready to go. Ok, no problem except that the high school bus leaves thirty minutes after the elementary bus is supposed to go and I have to stay with my kids until they are all physically on the bus. This driver was unwilling to make a second round trip with them, which would have taken about ten minutes total because he was afraid it would cut into his break between the elementary and secondary runs, regardless of the fact that half of the elementary hadn't gone anywhere and his break was now extended by 25 minutes. 25 minutes that, by contract, are my prep time when I get the classroom ready for the next day.
Then there are the days when there are two buses but they arrive early, load up and leave before my kids have even left the classroom. School is supposed to get out at 3:30 but more often than not, the buses leave anywhere from 3:18 to 3:25. The only time my students get a full day of school is when we know in advance that there will be only one bus, and I keep them in the room attempting to learn until the official end time. So much for having consistency in my daily schedule. So much for the drivers taking any kind of head count or know the kids well enough to notice than an entire grade is not on the vehicle.
Once on the bus, the students are supposedly no longer our responsibility but are in the hands of the bus company. The school takes this clause very literally. I was told last week "that's not our problem, the driver will deal with it" when I came running into the office to tell the principal, the assistant principal, the counselor, anyone that there was a fight on the bus. A fight on the bus going on right now! Only when the counselor rushed out to help, did anyone else bother to move. An adult witness to the fight was reluctant to the point of pouting, to write out a report of what she saw. The adult actually on the bus at the time was too busy chatting away with the driver to pay attention to the students wailing on each other until alerted to the disturbance by a teacher outside the bus. Oh, did I mention that part of the reason I believe the fight started in the first place was because no one told the school that there would only be one bus and far to many kids had far too much time (20 minutes) to wait for the first bus to return, during which they are expected to wait quietly in their lines? I was feeling feisty and in the mood to fight by that time too.
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