I was going to make a joke, but this is seriously some fucked up shit.

Batista said that even after notifying the monitor of the issue, the worker just gave the same child a different backpack and once again attempted to send them away with Batista.

“Then the bus monitor… got another backpack, but the same child, and brought him back to me. So again I said, ‘That’s not my child.’”

And then her kid finally gets off the bus and he’s missing his backpack and some clothing and doesn’t seem like himself? Wtf

Capitalism, privatization, passing the buck and the race to the bottom. It’s all related.

You don’t get this when schooling - and the associated transportation - is a social service that has been properly set up. There is no profit motive there, no race to the bottom that enshittifies everything involved.

In a well-funded public school system, drivers would be employed by the school system, have appropriate training and meet high standards, and be paid decently well. They would have the time and the incentive to get to know the students and get things right.

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It’s all bugfuck. I have a clear memory of waiting on the bell in 2nd grade. When that bell went, the teacher said, “Dismissed.”, and we scattered like cockroaches.

Drop by your locker for whatever you need to swap out, go your way. (Yes, we had lockers and were responsible for making it to class with the appropriate materials, as well as the locks, starting in kindergarten.) You could hit the creek behind the school, walk home, bike home, get in your parent’s car, hop on any bus you chose, whatever.

Between helicopter parents and a waning public education, we’ve spent decades taking away the responsibilities of children, making them goose-step their whole school career, and we wonder what went wrong. Add social-media peer pressure to the mix, no wonder young people are scared to be “different”, step out of line.