It's not about the bus

On WPS Transportation. Or not.

Rick Cinclair's photo for the T&G as part of Jeff Chamer's article of Monday

I got a message from a mom this week that said her daughter loves the new bus and said "it was beautiful." I think they're beautiful, too, but not only because they're shiny new buses.

We dropped our eldest off at college yesterday for the start of her senior year, and on the drive home, I was reflecting (as parents do) on the space between the person we'd just again sent forth and the four year old I remember helping up that big initial step onto the bus for kindergarten all those years ago, as many Worcester parents did for the first time this week. That little person and that big bus have an outsized relationship.
There's an enormous amount of trust embodied in that assist up the step and letting go of that little hand. As a school committee member, I keep that strongly in mind, especially this first week. 

It's the person who is at the top of the steps, though, that's the first impression families have of this system, this structure, their child is joining. The relationship of students to school bus drivers, like so many of the non-teaching staff in districts, often are among those that make all the difference. They're the first person from the district they see in the morning, the last they see at the end of the day, and how that interaction goes can determine how a day goes, and how a perspective on education is shaped.

Former Worcester superintendent Dr. Melinda Boone used to tell the story--you may have heard it?--of the custodian at NASA who, when stopped in the hall and asked what he was doing, responded that he was working to send a man to the moon. His work mattered in getting that done; a building that isn't cleaned and maintained isn't one that can send someone into space.

This is the same argument, really, that the Worcester School Committee was making by using ESSER funds to buy school buses: if the kids don't get to school at all or on time, and that's their access to education, then effectively they're not getting the education that they're guaranteed. That means that the mechanic that keeps the bus running, the trainers who make sure our drivers can drive the buses, the routers who make sure we have (and keep!) timely and effective routes, the liaisons who are getting people in and out and answering phones...they are people who are making sure Worcester kids are getting a public education. 

And that isn't only the case in Transportation. The student who got held after class and is five minutes late for lunch and still gets lunch with a warm greeting, the myriad of reasons a student may need a custodian during a school day and has one who ensures the student can get back to class, having buildings that are warm when they are supposed to be and have water where they are supposed to have it (and not where they don't)...these are the things that allow kids to get an education.

There's no better illustration of this right now than Jackson, Mississippi, where the entire city of 150,00 is without access to clean, running water. The district has flipped their schools back to virtual learning. And there's no end clearly in sight on this crisis.
You may not wake up in the morning, thinking about your access to clean, running water, but if someone isn't waking up in the morning, thinking about your clean water, and if that argument isn't ongoingly brought to those who vote the dollars to support that clean water, and those in power don't take action at some point, you aren't going to have clean, running water anymore. 

And we don't think a lot about the people who do that until the water isn't running or the bus doesn't show up or the building isn't clean or something isn't fixed.

Thus this Labor Day weekend post: for all those who do work in education and elsewhere that too often is invisible, until we need them and we don't have them. 
May we appreciate, celebrate, and value then in ways both symbolic and concrete.