Did you ride the short bus in school?

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I just checked google maps to see the actual distance and the school they sent me to in seventh grade was 31 miles away from my house. It says it should be a 37 minute drive but between picking up and dropping off other kids and not taking the thruway it took about 2 hours to get there every day. That was awful.

Where i live we don't use school busses. If you live very far from school r you hare disabled you might be able to get a taxi ride to and from school.

I have gotten taxi rides, although they were privately funded (if i remember correctly, i was 3 and 4 at the time).


My understanding is that you get a taxi ride and at most 3 special needs kids are in the taxi, although it might have changed since i last checked.

I didn't. I hated the bus though and was bullied so badly on it that my sister and mother would take turns driving me to school every day. I would have walked, but I didn't go to any schools close enough to home to do that.

Yes. But because the regular driver for my route as an as*hole and notorious bully. My parents and a counselor used the fact I was autistic as a loophole for me to use the bus for disabled kids to get away from him. I hated it because it took SO long to get home, despite the fact there were only like four other kids on that bus. But then it was a VERY rural part of town and the disabled bus catered to the WHOLE school...which was in itself a rural school. I was also in the special ed class, but only one of my classmates rode the "short bus" with me. I think I only rode the "short bus" for about a year or two because I got tired of the "retard bus" comments and like I said, I HATED how long the ride was and I was taken out of public school to be home-schooled. I only rode the "short bus" as a way to get away from the bully driver.

No such thing when I was in school, not even for intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Over the past few years, I've noticed a lot of parents drive their kids to the bus stops >_<

Not only are they impeding traffic by parking in the road with the engine running (no emergency flashers or anything), but I always get nervous when it's one of those white utility vans with no windows. It would be so easy for someone to just swipe up children, and due to the "bystander effect", nobody would even phone the police.



Oh geeze, I guess I can't complain about my bus rides anymore.

Besides the long ride they picked me up a block and a half away from my house even though all the other kids were picked up in front of their house. I'd have to be waiting there at 6 AM and in winter it was dark and cold and there was no shelter from bad weather.

One plus side was I had double the chance of a snow day. If the schools in my area closed but that far away school didn't I still didn't have to go because the bus didn't run.

I went to a tiny, private elementary school and then a tiny, private high school. I do not think either even had a short bus.

I remember riding normal buses a few times. But mostly I remember being driven in a car by my parents - or my brothers, when they were old enough.

I lived only 2 miles away from either but my parents never trusted me to walk to or from school. I used to think that that was ridiculous. But now I see how naive I still am today, how easily and how often I "zone out" my surroundings.

Oh gosh, yes! I rode the short bus up until the 4th grade. It was both fun, awkward, and confusing at the same time. Imagine my surprise when I started riding the "regular" buses...

We had that too. The only kids who had a stop right at their house were the two in wheelchairs (for obvious reasons).

In middle school, I had the stop all to myself, but in high school they moved me an extra block or two in the other direction, which was pretty nice.

Nope, I've never even been on a short bus in my entire life.

I rode the short bus my whole public school career. I loved it. No walking to the bus stop necessary and plus, my friends from my aspie pull out programs (I was in regular ed classes w/special ed consultation and support services) were on my bus. So, we could just sit and talk about school or things we did the night/weekend before. When I was in high school, I did take a big bus during the day to go to another school for my career and technical program. I also took big buses for field trips with the school. Other than that, always the short bus.

The school buses here aren't that bright, garish yellow that it seems practically all you Americans have. They're just the regular public buses that everyone catches except they have a designated school bus number shown at the front, side and back of the bus.

School kids also get picked up at particular bus stops, there's no picking you up at your house.

There's no such thing as a short bus here, at least not that I'm aware of.

My brother and I rode the "short bus" because he was a severe asthmatic. I also was diagnosed with asthma although I didn't have half the issues he did. Once he moved on I got to ride it alone even though I wouldn't otherwise qualify. When I moved to a new province there was a regular bus stop near the house so I took that and what a nightmare that was. There is no worse feeling than being forced to sit in the aisle because nobody wanted to be 'caught' sitting next to me. Say what you want about disabled or special needs kids but they never did anything like that. I still remember how awesome that bus driver was too and how well he treated those disabled children.

I should mention it turns out that my "asthma" cleared up shortly after I moved away from a weather-tight, poorly ventilated house where my mother was an obsessive cleaner and used undiluted chlorine daily, not to mention it was the 80s and literally everybody (including that nice bus driver) smoked around children indoors.

The private special needs schools I went to did not have a bus, so I had to be driven to school by a family member.

I took a big school bus from Queens to Manhattan (about 8 or so miles door to door) in first grade.

I went to a private school which provided transportation in vans from 2nd to 5th grade. The school was only about 2-3 miles from my home then.

I walked to school in sixth grade. The school was about three blocks from my home.

I walked, and sometimes took a public bus, rarely the subway, from 7- early part of 8th grade. The school was about 3/4 of a mile from my home.

I walked to school (a different school), which was about 3/4 of a mile from my home, for the rest of 8th grade.

I took a public bus, or rode a bike, from 9th grade till graduation. The school was a couple of miles from my home.