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

[gwraigty]

@meed18

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.

I think you’re misunderstanding the setup here. I’ll try to explain.

We live in a small city of around 53,000 people. The development that we live in is on land that used to be part of a township. It was a farm field before construction started. (The family’s farmhouse, complete with a dilapidated barn, stood on what is now the next street East of NS Street on my map.)

The land got annexed to the city for utilities, property taxes, etc., as pieces of the farmland continued to be sold for further development. For reasons that I don’t understand, the land that our development sits on did not become part of the city school district, although it became part of the city limits. The land remained under the purview of the rural school district. That’s the way the deal was done.

So, we live in a small city that has 2 different school districts. Most of the city is under the purview of the city school district. We are in a tiny section of the city that remained part of the rural school district.

Both school districts allow open enrollment. Students are allowed to get bus transportation from the district they are enrolled in. But the buses will not go outside the geographic boundaries of their respective school districts.

For example, my N neighbor had her kids enrolled in the city school district for a few years. The city school district would not pick her kids up at our corner because it’s not within the city school district. She had to take her kids to the closest city school district pickup location. The city school district contracts with a third-party school bus company.

Our rural school district used to require the open-enrolled kids who lived in the city school district to find their own way to the closest pickup location within the rural school district. Our rural school district owns their buses and the drivers are direct employees of the rural school district.

(This arrangement also resulted in residents of the city who are in the rural school district being taxed for both the city public libraries and the rural public library for many years, because the rural public library had been set up as a school district library. State law changed a couple of years ago to stop this. Now state residents are only taxed for the libraries in the school district they live in. But I digress.)

To make it even more confusing, some of the houses on our street are in the city school district. Starting with the 10th house South of ours is one part of the city school district. It was at the edge of the farmland before that part of the farmland was sold. The 13th house South of mine sits on the corner of the intersection that is one of the school bus pickup/drop off areas for the city school district. At least my N neighbor didn’t have to take her kids too far down the street to catch their bus.

Sometime in the last few years, our rural school district has assigned the open-enrolled kids to specific intersections throughout the district. The kids who are coming to our intersection and the intersection directly to the West, are coming from someplace North of here.

[gwraigty]

@meed18

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.

Agree with your first part. Disagree somewhat with your second part.

A car driving West on EW Street drops off a kid in our driveway, leaves, and said kid proceeds to run all over our driveway, sliding from our driveway into the street, running into the street, yes, I know it’s just horsing around, etc., etc.

Point being, that someone who lives on my street isn’t going to be driving their kid to our street from points West.

[gwraigty]

@meed18

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.

I do not remember posting anything that could be construed as that. If I did, I do apologize. You don’t need to lecture me.

[gwraigty]

@meed18

Just because kids aren’t from the district or the neighborhood shouldn’t be reason not to get along or act neighborly to them.

Agree and you’re reading something into my words that wasn’t my meaning.

[gwraigty]

@jerosen

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

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! That is exactly what I meant and what I believe I posted.

[gwraigty]

@glitch99

no decent bus driver is going to

Today’s 3 PM drop off. This is a new one on me…

[gwraigty]

No, I’m not a crazy lady running around from window to window to try and see where the school bus is each day. My computer desk is right next to a front window. I thought it strange that so much of it was visible out of the corner of my eye. And that is what I saw.

Well, it didn’t block the intersection, I’ll give the driver that.

The bus stopped at the SW corner on Mon., the SE corner yesterday, and now…there. If the pattern continues, the bus will skip our intersection completely tomorrow.

[WakesInc]

A couple of thoughts.

• Get off my driveway!
• At the rate you are going, your house is definitely going to get egged and tee-peed every year for the next decade. And you are going to have to deal with ding dong ditching for a while.
• Pretty much every bus stop is going to be on someone’s property. And no, stopping in front of someone’s house temporarily is not parking or blocking.
• LOTS and LOTS of me, my, mines in your responses.
• This is why we cannot have nice things.
• This is why we have insurance.

Listen to your husband. You’re at defcon 1 about a school bus stop. Think about that for just a second.

[glitch99]

@jerosen

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.

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.

Around here, a single school district encompasses the entire county. Everyone has a local school they’re assigned to attend, but they have the option to transfer to any school within the district. But transportation is only provided to students residing within the individual school’s boundaries, you are on your own if you choose to transfer to a different school.

[glitch99]

@gwraigty

No, I’m not a crazy lady running around from window to window to try and see where the school bus is each day. My computer desk is right next to a front window. I thought it strange that so much of it was visible out of the corner of my eye. And that is what I saw.

Well, it didn’t block the intersection, I’ll give the driver that.

The bus stopped at the SW corner on Mon., the SE corner yesterday, and now…there. If the pattern continues, the bus will skip our intersection completely tomorrow.

Are you sure it’s the same driver every day?

[t60]

Thanks OP, I love this thread! It’s both infuriating and hilarious from all perspectives. And it has pics to boot!

[meed18]

@gwraigty

I don’t want their kids on my property, that’s true. There’s no relationship there. Although, there’s more incentive to get along because we are neighbors. That’s not true of the open-enrolled kids who aren’t from this neighborhood, just get dropped off, and the parent leaves them here unsupervised.

This was the statement I was referring to. I took it as, you have an incentive to get along with the kids that live nearby because you are neighbors with their parents, but that same incentive doesn’t exist for those kids being dropped off. If I took that statement wrong, then I’m sorry. But hopefully you can see that it doesn’t exactly come off as you wanting to be friendly to the kids from outside the neighborhood.

[gwraigty]

@WakesInc

At the rate you are going, your house is definitely going to get egged and tee-peed every year for the next decade. And you are going to have to deal with ding dong ditching for a while.

BTDT with the eggs and the ding dong ditching, but not the tee-pee.

@WakesInc

You’re at defcon 1 about a school bus stop. Think about that for just a second.

I wasn’t born at defcon 1. This is not who I used to be. This is not who I want to be.

We have a “normal” daughter and an autistic son. He looks normal, but he doesn’t act normal. We never tried to hide it from anyone. (It would have been impossible anyway.) Think of your average bullying scenarios and magnify them by at least 10 times. He was mocked, picked on, because he was different. Nothing too out of the ordinary when he was younger, but as the neighborhood boys became preteens/teens, it escalated big time. It’s like they all of a sudden looked at him like he was a freak.

Our house was egged several times. Our garage door was dented in several places when someone started banging on it with something hard at 11 PM. Scared the crap out of me and my husband was out of town that night. The dents are still there. We’ve had our door banged on at midnight. We’ve had the ding dong ditching. They’d bang on the siding by our front porch and on the North side of our house. Sometimes we’d catch them in the act. Not always.

The bus driver shouted out to me through her open bus door one afternoon as she dropped my kids off that she overheard some kids on the bus talking about how a kid had peed on the side of our house. My kids heard that and so did other kids on the bus. Thanks lady. It just made it worse.

The time that they screamed things up at him through his bedroom window, I went defcon 1. It was the last straw. Appealing to the parents had been useless. We’d been putting up with it for years already. He’d been putting up with it for too long. Details upon request, but things quieted down amazingly after that. I should have done it earlier, but I was so afraid of making things worse than they already were. Keeping quiet, trying to ignore it, and hope it went away, was useless.

They’re all young adults now and they’re still in the neighborhood. We’re on good speaking terms now. If they’re bothering anyone, it isn’t us.

[gwraigty]

@glitch99

Are you sure it’s the same driver every day?

I could stand outside with my binoculars and find out. But it might freak the driver out. I shall pass.

[gwraigty]

@t60

Thanks OP, I love this thread! It’s both infuriating and hilarious from all perspectives. And it has pics to boot!

I am sorry that I don’t know how to do 3D animation. I’m sure I could have fun with that.

[gwraigty]

@meed18

This was the statement I was referring to. I took it as, you have an incentive to get along with the kids that live nearby because you are neighbors with their parents, but that same incentive doesn’t exist for those kids being dropped off. If I took that statement wrong, then I’m sorry. But hopefully you can see that it doesn’t exactly come off as you wanting to be friendly to the kids from outside the neighborhood.

Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t put it better. Hopefully, we’re good on that now? May I share a relevant story about incentives with a twist?

My daughter was in a preschool/daycare for a couple of hours a day for a couple of days per week just so she could play with the other kids. I thought she’d like it.

One day I went to pick her up. I was horrified to see a van parked in front of the preschool with several kids inside unattended! I double checked to be sure. There was no adult present in the van or standing around anywhere in the parking lot.

I went inside to pick up my daughter and quietly told the owner about the situation. There were other parents milling around in the lobby. It could have been one of them. She said she’d handle it, so I left with my daughter and 1 to 2 year old son.

Several hours later, our doorbell rang. A woman stood on my porch and told me that she was a good mother and a responsible babysitter and…I don’t need to relate the whole conversation, do I? Yeah, it wasn’t just her kids she’d left unattended, but other people’s kids she’d been babysitting.

Somehow, I didn’t go defcon 1 on her. I did express my concern over the safety of the kids. Nicely.

How in the heck did she know it was me and where to find me? The preschool owner must have given her my name. Turns out she lives on the cul-de-sac West of ours.

7 years later, she was our son’s substitute teacher for 3 months for the regular teacher out on maternity leave. And she’d never told me she was a teacher in our school district.

[jerosen]

@gwraigty

I was horrified to see a van parked in front of the preschool with several kids inside unattended!

For how long exactly were the kids in the van? Were they belted into car seats? Was the van door locked? Was it 100 degrees outside with the windows rolled up? Was the van engine running?

[gwraigty]

@jerosen

For how long exactly were the kids in the van? Were they belted into car seats? Was the van door locked? Was it 100 degrees outside with the windows rolled up? Was the van engine running?

This was about 19 years ago years ago. I don’t know exactly how long they were in the van. They appeared to be belted in. I don’t know if the van door was locked. I didn’t try to open it, as it wasn’t my property and they weren’t my kids. That might have looked bad. The windows were rolled up, not sure of the temp, but it was warm enough that I wasn’t cold at all when I was talking with the woman on my porch later. I don’t remember if the engine was running.

The kids were toddlers, too young to be left unattended IMO. There were a couple of restaurants in the small shopping strip, too. No way to be sure which business the adult had gone into.

Point was, if I had not been cordial during my conversation with this woman, my son might have suffered for it when she became his teacher 7 years later. At the time, I didn’t have an apparent immediate incentive to be neighborly with her, but I was anyway.

[jerosen]

Is it illegal or wrong or unsafe to leave your kids unattended in a car for 1-2 minutes if they’re belted into car seats and the door is locked and the vehicle isn’t running?

[Stubtify]

@jerosen

Is it illegal or wrong or unsafe to leave your kids unattended in a car for 1-2 minutes if they’re belted into car seats and the door is locked and the vehicle isn’t running?

In some states it is: State Laws and Federal Regulations - Kids and Car Safety