Elementary kids riding the bus with high schoolers

[Phoebe]

My son is in kindergarten and will be in first grade next fall when his school will begin bussing the K-5 kids with the high school kids. There have been major budget cuts and this is one of the more disturbing changes, in my view anyway.
My son is 6. The bus driver is (hopefully) too busy driving the bus to be involved in monitoring inappropriate behavior or language. Honestly, some of even the most appropriate high school behavior is not always suitable to the ears of the very young.

Would you be bothered by this as I am?

Amy

[Alyantavid]

My son rides a bus with K-12 kids. He's really had more issues with older elementary kids than high schoolers. (And really, the things that come out of the mouths of some elementary kids is worse than I could have ever imagined.)

His bus is set up so that the younger kids ride up front and the older ones are in the back.

[34me]

My son's school is becoming a K-12 school next year. Our biggest worries are with the middleschoolers.

[sewingmommy]

When I was in school this is how our bussing system was ...small town one school system....I don't think there is anything wrong with it ...and I have to agree with the PP about what comes out of the mouths of elementary kids can be just as bad if worse than high schoolers

[blizzard_babe]

I'd actually be somewhat comforted by the presence of the older kids. It's the middle-grades (upper elementary and middle school) kids who, in my professional experience, bother or are inappropriate in front of the littles. Older kids do inappropriate things, of course, but have enough experience to know what they should be saying/doing in front of whom. Yeah, a few don't care, but... most do, especially if it's pointed out to them that there are little ones around.

I've worked in K-12 schools (pretty much all the village schools out here are K-12), and the biggest kids tend to take responsibility for the littlest ones. A few well-placed instructions about being role models and helpers to the little ones might be all it takes. Heck, a 10th or 12th grader could be useful to have around... those 10 year-olds who want to exercise power over a six year-old will think twice when the hulking 18 year-old captain of the football team is giving him the eye from the next row back.

Also, a lot of the times in mixed-grade situations like this, they'll section off the bus... kinders get the first few front rows, followed by the other lower elementary, then upper elementary, then JH/HS.

I'd get a few more details on how it will work, but I don't think the situation in and of itself is an outright problem. Multi-age situations often work out better than more age-limited situations.

[staceychev]

Originally Posted by blizzard_babe

Older kids do inappropriate things, of course, but have enough experience to know what they should be saying/doing what in front of whom.

ITA.

I teach teens, and they're very aware of the differences in how they act around little kids and how they act around just each other. They take their "young adult" status quite seriously, actually.

[Phoebe]

Thanks for the perspective. Makes sense. I'm not so bothered any more.

[Peony]

This is common is my rural area, I rode on buses as a kid that did this. When I was older, middle/early high school, the driver would sit the Kinders with us older girls. We always liked taking care of them for the ride.

[JL83]

I was recently on the bus with my 3yo. We don't have school buses here, kids take public transit. We stopped at a high school and the bus filled up. All the kids who say my 3yo didn't do anything inappropriate. One kid swore and another kid promptly poked him and pointed out my 3yo. The kid who swore looked super embarrassed and apologized for the next couple minutes.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

This has been the case here since before I was in school even the pre k and some head start kids ride the same buses as well. It is one of the major reasons why I take my kids to school and pick them up.

It wasnt a good experience for me.

[callherpetrol]

I moved to a suburb of Montgomery, Alabama for my last three years of high school, and had to ride a bus home which integrated those in 1st grade to 12th grade. I was HORRIFIED at what the little kids got to listen to. The middle school and older students swore (not just cr** and sh**, but f*** and pu**y), talked about sex, and regularly got into fights on the bus which made the bus driver have to stop and try to break the fight up. Although the littler kids got to sit in the front of the bus, people talked so loudly that everyone could hear what they were saying. I then began seeing the little kids acting the way the older kids did. I really don't like the mixture of older and younger students on a bus.

[Linda on the move]

Our bus is k-8. The 6-8 graders sit in the back, and the k-5 sit in the front. The last row of elementary kids and the first row of middle school kids are friends who are trying to sit close enough together to talk, and form a natural barrier between the younger kids and the bulk of the middle schoolers.

My DD says that the language of the middle schoolers is horrid.

[indie]

A bus going to a school in our area for kids with special needs and/or behavioral problems had an incident where a very young boy was forced to engage in a sex act with a teen. (I think the teen may have been legally an adult--can't remember for sure.) So, yes, I would feel uncomfortable with that arrangement.

[NiteNicole]

I rode the bus when I was a kid, at a few different schools. The standard was that we sat by grade (so the driver had a list of kids and ages before school started and we had assigned seats), youngest in the front, oldest in the back, and boys on one side and girls on the other. I can even remember that when things got too loud, we got in trouble - so getting in trouble on the bus would mean your parents got a note and you missed out on recess the following day (which involved writing lines and being bored). At one point, we were not allowed to speak. For like a week! This was the very end of the 70s/early 80s.

So I guess what I'm asking is when did they stop having rules on the bus?

[peaceful_mama]

When people started viewing the ride as a right, not a privilege?

My dad was a school bus driver, owned the buses with my grandpa, in the same time frame (late 70's-early 80s) He told me a story of one kid he kicked off the bus for inappropriate behavior, a week I think it was---the dad had the kid WALK to school and was all for the consequence! (It was probably a couple miles and it was a high schooler I think, and a smallish town, so no real safety flags there.)

Guess what? The kid followed the bus rules when he came back. So did the others.

[zebra15]

For grades 1-4 I rode the bus part way with Jr high kids (this was early 80's) I was going to a private school in the next town over and needed to transfer to that schools' bus at the jr. high. Anyway it was less than ideal but I made it through. I had a couple other friends from the private school on the 1st bus with me and we just sat in the front and talked or read a book. It was a short 15 min ride or so til the transfer.

[aslyn]

When I was in school I rode the bus with high schoolers in k-5. I dont remember any problems, the high schoolers just ignored us all for the most part.

I dont think what comes out of their mouths would bother me so much..the kids are gonna hear things wether we like it or not. I know 6 yr olds who have worse mouths than I do, and thats saying a WHOLE lot since I have a potty mouth at times.

[blizzard_babe]

A side note, since this thread has been resurrected. As I was driving to work past a bus stop full of kids a few weeks ago, some of the little (kindergarten-ish) kids were running around, and one kid darted into the road. One of the big (junior high or high school-ish) kids grabbed him before he got out into traffic. So... having big kids around can be an advantage when it comes to physical safety.

[jeninejessica]

I just wanted to say everything that Blizzard babe and nite nicole said-- I rode the bus from grades 7-11 with my siblings, who ranged from kindegraden to grade 6. Honestly, the high schoolers were much much more well behaved around the young children than either a/ the young children were around each other or b/ the older children were around each other.

Ours was a small town, and so maybe that's different? but the bus driver wasn't afraid to stop the bus if he needed to discipline or separate children... and also the older kids were pretty good about going up a few seats and separating children who were bullying each other. Honestly, I think they're probably lucky to have the big guys there.

Obviously there are some stories about inappropriate actions, and such-- but i think it really does deal largely with what sort of neighborhood you're in, and what the children are like. I can honestly say I NEVER heard any of the language that people listed above being spoken on the bus, and I can say with absolutely certainty, that if one of the older students tried to engage a younger one in any sort of inappropriate act, let's just say that rest of the high schoolers would have made sure he/she never, EVER did it again.

[Annie Mac]

I took the bus with high school kids. We mostly ignored each other, and I recall very little of their conversations, actions, etc. Every once in a while, one of the older girls would decide to play mother bird and take a younger girl under her wing, let her sit with her, comb her hair, that kind of thing. Nice stuff, nothing mean.

I do have one very pro-older kid story from my own childhood. I had been dropped off at the bus stop, and was walking home. We had new neighbours and these neighbours had two big mean dogs, not chained. I couldn't get past them to get home. I was terrified and ended up standing near the bus stop, crying my eyes out, wondering how I was ever going to get home. One of the older boys from the bus recognized me and asked me what was wrong, and then he walked me home. I was so shy I insisted on walking on the other side of the road from him all the way home, but he was patient and let me do that, no problem. Younger kids and older kids together...that's all part of the community. He might have helped me even if we hadn't been on the same bus together, but it probably increased his sense of responsibility, the fact that he knew more or less who I was.