Local school district has been using our driveway as a bus stop for months without our knowledge or consent - Concerns about property rights and liabilities

101

This thread seems to fall into the category of ‘this is why we cant have nice things’…

Oh the modern age…

Growing up at bus-school age in the 90s, we used a driveway all the time for bus pickup. They would drive up, pick us up, and move on. No blocking the drive, no liability issues, neighbors were friendly and neighborly. NO ISSUE.

I’ve tried to ready through this zombie thread, but still cant see what the issue is. If a car or bus is PARKED blocking a drive for more than a couple minutes, sure that is an issue, but it didn’t sound like that’s the case…

102

Ah the good old days…when there was no WWW.

I think the only difference during the good old days is you didn’t have an online forum to complain about it. People have been upset over less for eons. I remember a crotchety old neighbor 40 years ago who said if a ball came into her yard she would call the police if we came to get it. We were 6.

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103

This is the rare case of an OP actually putting way too much info in the first post causeing it to devolve almost immediately. After I read this line, I really couldn’t understand why you were even posting about it.

You called the district and they went out of their way to call all the parents to get the bus stop to the right place. If, after a week, the issue wasn’t fixed, your next course of action would be to call again. Then wait another week, then call again. The school district was doing the right thing and your problem was going to be solved one way or another (communication with parents, communication with the bus driver, moving the stop all together). I have no idea why you actually posted this thread in the first place. It doesn’t seem like the school was actually trying to do anything wrong once they were made aware of the situation. It just hadn’t been fully rectified yet. There is no reason to start asking about your “rights” or “liabilities” when the issue was on it’s way to being fixed.

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104

The main issue is my concern, whether warranted or not, of a parent hoping to win the lawsuit lottery if their child gets hurt while waiting for a school bus daily on my private property, most notably the driveway.

Here it is not just neighbors and their kids. We have kids who are open-enrolled in the district whose parents drive here from outside the neighborhood and drop them off and then leave, which they’re not supposed to do, per the school policy I posted a few posts back. They’re not neighbors and have no incentive to act neighborly.

Many of our neighbors are friendly and neighborly. The neighbor to the immediate S of us is not. Her youngest kid rides the school bus and is on my property daily because of it. It’s not the kid’s fault that her mother is the way she is.

They’ve lived here since 1995, us since 1996. There is a lot of negative history between her and the surrounding neighbors. She has called various authorities on various surrounding neighbors for imagined offences, violations, whatever. The things that she has done would make a whole other topic altogether. It would be only annoying if not for the fact that the accusations aren’t always minor. She has accused neighbors of things that are actual crimes, not necessarily to their face, but via gossip. One in particular could have destroyed a family (not mine). I once was bothered enough by it to mention this in extremely vague terms to a neighbor on the next street over. I said something like, “Let’s say that you have a neighbor A who says something really bad about a neighbor B…” and right away my neighbor said, “You’re talking about D, aren’t you?” Everyone in close proximity to her knows, I’ve learned. Newer neighbors find out about her in time.

The morning after the parents were contacted by the school district, I was out in our driveway standing close to our garage door. She opened her garage door and stood in the entrance way and glared at me for several minutes. She’ll be looking for something against me now. It’s what she does. She didn’t like a vegetable garden we used to have several years ago. I overheard her talking about it with someone when I went outside to work in it one afternoon. When she saw me, she shushed the other person and their voices got real low, but they kept talking and looking over at me. Shortly after, a city inspector came to my house for a potential violation concerning my garden. It was remedied in short order, and the guy laughed because he’d expected to find something monstrous according to the complaint.

Living in near proximity to her has not been a joy for anyone. Actually, her husband is much the same way. He once banged on someone’s car window because he saw them doing something inside that he didn’t like.

I just try to keep to myself and live and let live most of the time.

105

I had a couple of neighbors like that growing up. I’ve been the kid who got in trouble, sometimes deservedly.

Another big difference is that parents took responsibility for their kids and didn’t blame the rest of the world for their kid’s bad behavior. Now it’s, “No, my kid would never do that!”

106

People post for information, or sometimes to vent.

Other people continued to add to it, one poster in particular, over and over again.

Actually, this topic might have died off rather quickly if not for that.

Some asked more questions. Should I have started ignoring everyone? Then people could pull the old FWF spiel of the OP disappearing and not coming back.

Some people’s opinions appeared to change after I got more comprehensive pictures up of our area. It was my fault for not doing that the first day.

But no one forced you or anyone into this topic either.

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107

Glitch 99’s 7 line response to your venting was perfectly reasonable. Your 43 line response to him, on the other hand, was quite defensive and overly dismissive. When venting to the extent that you did (your OP was 60+ lines long) and bringing up the fact that you called the police, you should expect some critical responses.

I never told you to stop posting, just that I didn’t see the point. Now that you say you were posting simply to vent, I see the point. Instead I question your defensiveness to the legitimate responses to your vent/rant.

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108

If the school policy is to not pick up kids within walking distance from their house and effectively force parents to drop them off at bus stops in other neighborhoods, that’s a ridiculous policy and your issue should be with the school district and not the parents or kids getting dropped off.

As far as not wanting to “act neighborly” because you have no incentive because these kids are interlopers of some sort… where I’m from, the middle aged ladies with that attitude are usually referred to with “unkind” language behind their backs. Do you really want to be one of those ladies?

109

I understand this - these are kids from outside the district, who specifically do not have transportation provided to them. Unless they’ve provided an in-district address that’s entitled to transportation, the real issue is they shouldnt even be allowed on the bus at all.

Not that a bus driver is going to leave a kid standing alone at the bus stop instead of taking them to school, but that’s basically what the parents are counting on.

110

Nope.

The driveway apron is private property, presenting a liability. Assuming no lack of maintenance or responsible snow/ice removal of the sidewalk, no liability.

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111

Please read the part of my post that you quoted again. I didn’t say that - I - had no incentive to act neighborly. I said (bolding added):

Here’s a rephrasing:

They’re not neighbors and they have no incentive to act neighborly.

112

Wow, you actually counted the lines, LOL!

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113

Only for information. I did not ask the police to come out. I really do not want the police to come out.

114

People who know me in person, know that I’m not one of those ladies, despite what some may think of me here.

115

Last year, during casual conversation with a neighbor on the next block over, she told me that the open-enrolled kids are assigned to catch the bus at our corners now. I think it’s been that way for a few years, judging from the number of cars that line the streets at those times. Sometimes, there are more open-enrolled kids than neighbor kids boarding the buses.

Through 2009 at least, that wasn’t the case. It used to be just the kids who lived on the street who were assigned to board the bus.

116

I think it’s a jump to assume the kids are from out of the district. That’s not a common thing (school systems have departments dedicated to this not happening). Based on gwraighty’s stories about her school system, I think it’s more likely that the kids do belong in the school, but the busing infrastructure (or lack thereof) requires the outside families to take their kids to her bus stop.

But I see your point. Is it really her responsibility to find out if these kids should be on this bus or not (are they scammers or is the school system just cheap)? No. But it is her responsibility to treat them the same as she treats the neighborhood kids, since she doesn’t know for sure that they’re doing anything wrong.

117

Counting them isn’t nearly as bad as writing them lol

I only have your own statements to go on. You’re the one that said you have no incentive to get along or act neighborly to those kids. Where I come from, you shouldn’t need an incentive to act neighborly to someone, especially a kid.

118

She said above that the school has open enrollment. This is allowed in some areas. The school lets kids from out of district enroll on request regardless of where they live. My home town has open enrollment. Here you can do it but only if the schools have space and approve it and they won’t approve if they don’t have space so the good schools fill up and nobody else can get it. But in open enrollment areas that I’m familiar of theres no cross town bussing to bring the out of area kids to the school, its your job to get your kid to the school. Or you can drop them at a normal bus stop.

So the kids DO belong to the school but they come from outside the district boundary.
Its not hard to figure these kids are from out of district when the parents drive a kid to a bus stop and then drop them off and leave.

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119

Thanks for clearing that up. When I read “out of the district” I misunderstood as, “not allowed to attend that school,” and the parents were gaming the district system by using a fake address and pretending to live in gwraigty’s neighborhood and dropping their kids off there. But my original point still stands. Just because kids aren’t from the district or the neighborhood shouldn’t be reason not to get along or act neighborly to them.

120

i don’t think any one was in disagreement

gwraigty’s point was that the kids themselves might not have the same incentive to act neighborly

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