Transcript

School Bussing · Chuck Douglas

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Speaker 1: Greeting salutations, Welcome my friends to another edition of The
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Speaker 1: Power Hour on six ten double UTV, and I'm Chuck Douglas.
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Speaker 1: You know who you are, and we take it from there.
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Speaker 1: We get one hour together, which means I talk really
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Speaker 1: fast and you you must listen even faster. My number
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Speaker 1: eight two one nine eight eight six eight two one
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Speaker 1: dou WUTV in or one eight hundred six ten WTV.
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Speaker 1: And heard Allison in the news earlier talking about the Uh,
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Speaker 1: the highway patrol checking out the school buses. I guess
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Speaker 1: do they do that for every district in the state,
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Speaker 1: every school bus in the state. Since it's the highway patrol,
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Speaker 1: I'm guessing so, and uh, I'm look, I don't know
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Speaker 1: how many times I have been behind the school bus,
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Speaker 1: not even diesel buses, gas busses with smoke, exhaust, smoke
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Speaker 1: pouring off the back and all that kind of stuff.
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Speaker 1: That report leads me to believe that they're not supposed
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Speaker 1: to be like that when the school year begins. It
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Speaker 1: sounded that way to me, just you know, the buses
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Speaker 1: are supposed to be a good wicker. I have to
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Speaker 1: wonder after that initial check at the beginning of the
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Speaker 1: school year by the highway patrol, is there any required
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Speaker 1: I mean required maintenance on school buses, because you know,
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Speaker 1: rings go bad in a bus, just like they do
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Speaker 1: in a car. Well in the old days. I don't
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Speaker 1: know if they still do. Maybe cars don't even have
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Speaker 1: rings anymore for all I know. But during the course
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Speaker 1: of the school year, I have to wonder what the
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Speaker 1: maintenance requirements are, or if there are any. While it
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Speaker 1: might be great to start the school year that way,
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Speaker 1: many many times I've wondered, how is that thing even
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Speaker 1: on the road, got a head light out, got a
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Speaker 1: tail light out, turn signal out working, smoke pouring out
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Speaker 1: of the exhaust, and they're transporting your kids. I just
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Speaker 1: I'm a little baffled by that. Did you take a
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Speaker 1: school bus when you went to school? You were a
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Speaker 1: kid that walked?
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Speaker 2: No, my town was I lived at a subdivision like
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Speaker 2: four miles outside of town, so we had to had
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Speaker 2: to take a bus.
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Speaker 1: Okay, four miles, I get, yeah, yeah, four or five?
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Speaker 2: I don't know, I can't, but the I did remember
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Speaker 2: since then, like I'd worry about bus drivers because our
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Speaker 2: bus driver taking us home and picking us up would
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Speaker 2: be like yeah, yeah, I just sat down. He can
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Speaker 2: do whatever you want. So we'd just like walk around
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Speaker 2: and throw it like he cared.
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Speaker 1: Not one iotea up. Oh my gosh, a bit which.
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Speaker 2: Was fired as a kid. But then I look back
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Speaker 2: and I'm like, wait a minute, that could have ended
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Speaker 2: up badly well.
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Speaker 1: As I said before, and I say again, you know,
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Speaker 1: I'm in favor of elimination of buses, except where you know,
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Speaker 1: the closest school is, you know, two thirty miles away. Okay,
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Speaker 1: I get that, but when you've got a school down
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Speaker 1: the street, that's where you should go to school, especially
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Speaker 1: in Columbus where now we're talking about the healthcare costs
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Speaker 1: last year, I guess overran budgeted money by forty million dollars.
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Speaker 1: That's that's a lot of money. And running these buses
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Speaker 1: is we don't need to do it anymore. The reason
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Speaker 1: it's let's not forget. Let's not forget the origins of
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Speaker 1: buses in Columbus, Ohio de segregation. Before that, we all
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Speaker 1: walked to our neighborhood schools. But then de segregation Judge
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Speaker 1: Robert Duncan issued the order that we had to start
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Speaker 1: moving kids around based on their race, which is discriminatory
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Speaker 1: and I wish I would have been old enough to
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Speaker 1: challenge that in court. Back then, you were moved to
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Speaker 1: other schools in other neighborhoods on government transportation forcibly because
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Speaker 1: of your race. You were penalized and taken from a
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Speaker 1: nice school and a nice neighborhood where your parents had
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Speaker 1: worked their tails off to buy a home so that
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Speaker 1: you could go to school there, and then taken back
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Speaker 1: to the place they escaped because of your race. It's
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Speaker 1: funny that they thought they were combating racism with racism.
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Speaker 1: The court issued a racist decision and the school system
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Speaker 1: complied with the racist directive. Those days are over. That
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Speaker 1: was nineteen seventy seven. It's done. You don't need to
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Speaker 1: put kids on buses based on their skin color anymore,
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Speaker 1: so don't have the buses. It's not difficult to understand
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Speaker 1: that the buses cost money. It costs money to buy them,
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Speaker 1: it costs money to maintain them, it costs money to
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Speaker 1: fuel them, it costs money to pay someone to drive them.
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Speaker 1: Get rid of the buses save millions because it's no
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Speaker 1: longer necessary. And if over the years you have torn
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Speaker 1: down the neighborhood school where those kids would have gone
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Speaker 1: in those cases, if there's no school within a mile
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Speaker 1: of the house, all right, fine, we got to bus
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Speaker 1: them because you messed that up. But for all those
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Speaker 1: neighborhoods that do have neighborhood schools, let the kids go
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Speaker 1: to their neighborhood schools. That's simple, and we save a fortune.
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Speaker 1: And children are close to home. Should anything go wrong,
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Speaker 1: parents have to come get them, they get sick in
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Speaker 1: the middle of the day. Whatever. I think, this is
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Speaker 1: just practical common sense stuff. We would save a fortune.
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Speaker 1: We always hear those, you know, they love to say
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Speaker 1: the community. Everybody wants to talk about the community. The
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Speaker 1: community actually used to mean community. Now it just means
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Speaker 1: whatever you wanted to mean, community policing, community involvement. I
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Speaker 1: love to throw around the word. There is no community anymore.
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Speaker 1: Why nobody's connected to their community. There are no more
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Speaker 1: neighborhood schools. Nobody's going you know, there's no boy Scout
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Speaker 1: troop where all the kids in the neighborhood join the
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Speaker 1: Scouts when they're little, they become cub Scouts or or
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Speaker 1: girl Scouts. What are the girl Brownies? That's what the
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Speaker 1: girl Scouts are. You grow up in the neighborhood with
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Speaker 1: the other kids, and you develop that fraternity, that sorority,
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Speaker 1: and you all go to the same school, and and
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Speaker 1: all your parents know each other. And if little Billy's
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Speaker 1: messing up on the way home, the little Johnny's mom
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Speaker 1: is on the phone to little Billy's mom going, Hey,
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Speaker 1: guess what I saw your kid doing. So when little
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Speaker 1: Billy gets home, he knows he's got to face the
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Speaker 1: music man. You sounds so old fashioned, I am. I am.
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Speaker 1: I'm talking about crazy stuff back in the days when
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Speaker 1: we didn't have heroin people dancing in the middle of
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Speaker 1: traffic and no drive by shootings. Yeah, I'm old fashioned
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Speaker 1: like that because we were better. We as a city
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Speaker 1: were better, we as a school system were better, we
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Speaker 1: as people were better. Period. I don't think any can
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Speaker 1: you argue with me, You're not old enough to argue
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Speaker 1: with me, because I'll I'm way ahead of you. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I can't.
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Speaker 2: I can't.
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Speaker 1: I don't know. But even in your era, and and
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Speaker 1: the fact that you know you grew up, you said,
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Speaker 1: four miles away from school and had to take a bus, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: did you still have stuff in like all the kids
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Speaker 1: in your neighborhood, did you guys all do stuff together
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Speaker 1: all the time, okay, constantly.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we all grew up together.
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Speaker 1: We're better like that. I couldn't get away with anything good.
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Speaker 1: It was good. It turned you into a better person.
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Speaker 2: It sure did, because I was I wasn't a bad kid,
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Speaker 2: but I did take my parents jeep when I was
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Speaker 2: like twelve.
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Speaker 1: See that's bad.
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Speaker 2: That was bad.
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Speaker 1: That was very bad.
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Speaker 2: My neighbor told on me, and she should have because
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Speaker 2: that was not the brightest thing to do.
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Speaker 1: Any little thing when I was a kid could get
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Speaker 1: me in trouble. And I knew because Mom was part
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Speaker 1: of the mom network. And I would be walking home
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Speaker 1: from Highland Elementary School and I lived what three streets away,
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Speaker 1: four streets away. There was a particular alley that ran
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Speaker 1: off of Clarendon Avenue that for some reason, Mom did
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Speaker 1: not want me walking through that alley to go home.
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Speaker 1: That was her rule. You don't you come clear on
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Speaker 1: up to it was called Ong Street. O n G.
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Speaker 1: You come clear on up to Ong Street and you
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Speaker 1: take Ong Street over to White Thorn. Then you go
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Speaker 1: down white Thorn and take this alley. This one's okay
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Speaker 1: to come over to Belvidere. That's where I grew up.
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Speaker 1: On Belvidere. If I went down that alley, she knew
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Speaker 1: about it. When I got home. I did it twice,
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Speaker 1: and at that point I did not want to push
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Speaker 1: my luck for a third time. And I couldn't figure
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Speaker 1: out how she was doing it. Well, it's because she
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Speaker 1: had Juliette Saunders and Connie Toles and all these other
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Speaker 1: moms and they all had her phone number. So when
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Speaker 1: I came walking in the back gate of our backyard
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Speaker 1: to come up to our back it was my back
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Speaker 1: side that was in trouble.
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Speaker 2: YEA what kept what was going on in the alley?
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Speaker 1: She just thought it was a bad I guess kids
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Speaker 1: fought there a lot or something, but she just did
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Speaker 1: not want me going through that alley. It was one
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Speaker 1: of those mother You know how moms are. Don't do this,
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Speaker 1: don't do that, and everything puts your eye out. That
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Speaker 1: was how my mom was. But I could not get
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Speaker 1: away with doing And.
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Speaker 3: People say, well, that's restrictive and oppressed seven. You can't
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Speaker 3: do that to you. Quit applying your twenty twenty six
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Speaker 3: ill logic to what was. Because what was worked. You
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Speaker 3: might think we are intellectually advanced ors, but we're not.
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Speaker 3: I was just talking to somebody a messenger. During the break,
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Speaker 3: He's like, man, I just I'm turning off my radio
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Speaker 3: on my TV. I'm so sick of hearing about Fauci
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Speaker 3: And I say, you know what, I'm not. I'm gonna
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Speaker 3: keep on pushing it because we need to be reminded
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Speaker 3: of how gullible we were. We are no better in
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Speaker 3: twenty twenty six than we were in twenty twenty, And
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Speaker 3: in twenty twenty we showed that we were the same
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Speaker 3: people that Orson Wells freaked out with war the worlds
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Speaker 3: in nineteen forty eight.
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Speaker 1: I think it was we are still gullible if the
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Speaker 1: presentation is the right way, if the person saying it
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Speaker 1: is the right person, using the correct words with the
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Speaker 1: appropriate voice, we go, oh my, We're just as gullible
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Speaker 1: today as we were then. So yeah, I'm going to
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Speaker 1: keep hammering the point home over and over again so
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Speaker 1: that people don't forget. We really fell for it, didn't
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Speaker 1: We Not just the people of America, people of the
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Speaker 1: world really fell for it. We're not all that smart.
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Speaker 1: We'd like to think we are, but we're not. If
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Speaker 1: we were all that smart, there would be no there
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Speaker 1: would be no con men in the world. No Nigerian
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Speaker 1: prince were that different. The only thing that's changes our
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Speaker 1: methods and practices in life. And where where where's that goutteness?
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Speaker 1: Where's it gotteness? Children that that misbehaved to epic levels violence, drugs, underperforming,
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Speaker 1: if not straight out failing school systems. Everything costs us
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Speaker 1: more and for the more that we are paying, we're
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Speaker 1: getting less. What kind of condition is is your pavement
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Speaker 1: in on in on your street? How's your how's your uh?
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Speaker 1: Your trash pick up? You got enough police officers patrolling
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Speaker 1: the neighborhood? Now if if you're answering yes, then you're
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Speaker 1: paying no attention. No, we don't. We're getting less for more,
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Speaker 1: and we keep swallowing it because they go, this is
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Speaker 1: how it has to be. We need neighborhood schools, we
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Speaker 1: need mom networks. We need to go back because forward
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Speaker 1: forward ain't working out so well. So when you say, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: you're Jess in the past. You're talking about the past. Yes,
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Speaker 1: yes I am, because it and we were better than
13:43
Speaker 1: or maybe that's just me