Please read carefully and help us to keep
all of our boys and girls at Country Meadows safe. Thank you so much for your support and
understanding in helping us to maintain a safe and orderly environment. Our main objective is to make sure that your
children are safe and accounted for at all times.
Our District 96
Transportation Policy has become more specific in a few ways:
We have always required a daily written
note if there are changes to the typical transportation routine. However, often times, a parent might email
changes to either a teacher, Mrs. Kelly, or Mrs. Stanton. This posed a problem when staff was absent or
in meetings, the message was not always relayed. Therefore, you can image the worry and
confusion when a child went home to the wrong, unsupervised place. If there is a change to
the typical routine, please make sure you communicate with your child’s teacher
using a daily note that comes to school in your child’s backpack. You are more than welcome to follow-up with
an email to the teacher if you want to be sure he/she knows to look for
it.
Phone calls and emails will not
be allowed to change a child’s typical routine. Of course, we understand that there are
emergency situations. In that case,
please communicate with our office staff via a phone conversation and we will
do our best to help you.
The policy last year also stated that
riding buses for parties and scouts is not allowed. In the policy you see below, play dates are also considered
an unacceptable use of transportation resources. With a note sent to your child’s teacher via
their backpack in the morning, children can be claimed at parent pick-up to go
home with another family. We
sincerely appreciate your support in keeping our students safe and accounted
for by picking up children at school that have play dates together.
Please remember to help your
child’s classroom teacher know where to send your child at the end of the day
if you have a changing routine.
For example, if a student goes to Clubhouse on Tuesday and Thursday but
takes a bus the other days and that plan is changing, we need a note about the
change. With more than 20 eager learners
in the classroom and a lot of different family routines, you can imagine that
it could get hard to manage. Our little
ones love to tell us very convincingly that they should be at parent pick-up
when they are to be on the bus based on a conversation they might have
heard. Therefore, we never take the
child’s work without a note. Thank you
for helping us get all students where they need to be.
Here is the transportation excerpt from
the Handbook:
9.4 Permission for Students to Ride
Other Buses
Changes to the typical/assigned routine must be communicated in a daily written note; no email will be
accepted. Due to capacity restrictions, the request will be considered by the
building principal (at the middle-school level, by the Assistant Principal),
who will determine whether there is adequate seating on the bus to accommodate
additional riders. Emergency changes to the typical routine must be
communicated by phone call to the school. Riding an unassigned bus for
birthday parties, scouts, carpools/play dates, etc., is not considered
appropriate use of transportation resources. Permission for such reasons is
reserved for emergencies only or at the discretion of the principal. A student attending Willow Grove School is
not allowed to ride a bus other than the one to which he or she is assigned, or
to get off a bus at a stop other than his or her assigned bus stop under any
circumstances.
9.4-a. Removal of a Child from the Bus. Parents
may not remove their child from the bus if the bus is at a location other than
at the child's assigned bus stop. In the event of a delay or malfunction, bus
drivers are not authorized to release students to parents. Only the building
administrator may allow students to be released from a bus route, and then only
to the child's parent or guardian. The
bus company will send another bus to continue the route.
