Victory
Among the many things I have had to do before the move is to arrange for busing for the kids from the new suburban domicile into the city to their school.
Those of you who do not have kids and/or don't send them to a private school may not realize that the public school systems are actually obligated to transport kids to private schools, as long as the private school is within 10 miles of the public school district's boundary. At least, they are in Pennsylvania. I know, it took me by surprise, too.
Anyhoo, our school secretary assured me that they'd had kids bused from my new school district before, but also warned that they'd put up a fight. She was right.
First they told me they couldn't find a route on Mapquest that was less than 10.3 miles. If I could find a route from their boundary that was less than 10 miles, that would be ok - except they couldn't provide a map of their boundaries. So where do I start with no data?
Then they gave me an intersection that they said they thought was closest. I checked Google Maps, and told the guy it said 9.8 miles.
Then he said, well, that intersection wasn't REALLY the boundary, it was ACTUALLY at this particular address on one of the streets. So I plugged that into Google, and it said 9.9 miles.
THEN he said they couldn't just trust some map on the Internet, so they'd have to send a guy out to drive it. Three days later he did so using the Mapquest map, and - surprise! - it was 10.3 miles. I called to protest this and was told that they were not going to keep driving different versions of the route, and the ball was now in my court.
Fed up, on Tuesday I sent them an email with attached Word document containing maps pulled from Google, AAA, Rand McNally AND MSN Maps, with red boxes around the places where it said "9.8 miles" and arrows pointing to said red boxes. I also showed them where the Mapquest map did NOT take the shortest possible route through two different neighborhoods.
Yesterday they capitulated. As long as our school sent them the right forms, well, ok. But in one last forlorn attempt to dissuade me, they pointed out that it would be a looooong bus ride.
No dice buddy. You're going to be busing my kids for the next year.
And in case anyone thinks that I'm asking a lot of the school district, I will point out that a) I will be paying school taxes but not actually sending my kids to their schools for another year, and, more importantly, b) they are ALREADY taking other kids from their district to a Catholic school 5 blocks from our school, so this is not much of an additional burden for them.
Those of you who do not have kids and/or don't send them to a private school may not realize that the public school systems are actually obligated to transport kids to private schools, as long as the private school is within 10 miles of the public school district's boundary. At least, they are in Pennsylvania. I know, it took me by surprise, too.
Anyhoo, our school secretary assured me that they'd had kids bused from my new school district before, but also warned that they'd put up a fight. She was right.
First they told me they couldn't find a route on Mapquest that was less than 10.3 miles. If I could find a route from their boundary that was less than 10 miles, that would be ok - except they couldn't provide a map of their boundaries. So where do I start with no data?
Then they gave me an intersection that they said they thought was closest. I checked Google Maps, and told the guy it said 9.8 miles.
Then he said, well, that intersection wasn't REALLY the boundary, it was ACTUALLY at this particular address on one of the streets. So I plugged that into Google, and it said 9.9 miles.
THEN he said they couldn't just trust some map on the Internet, so they'd have to send a guy out to drive it. Three days later he did so using the Mapquest map, and - surprise! - it was 10.3 miles. I called to protest this and was told that they were not going to keep driving different versions of the route, and the ball was now in my court.
Fed up, on Tuesday I sent them an email with attached Word document containing maps pulled from Google, AAA, Rand McNally AND MSN Maps, with red boxes around the places where it said "9.8 miles" and arrows pointing to said red boxes. I also showed them where the Mapquest map did NOT take the shortest possible route through two different neighborhoods.
Yesterday they capitulated. As long as our school sent them the right forms, well, ok. But in one last forlorn attempt to dissuade me, they pointed out that it would be a looooong bus ride.
No dice buddy. You're going to be busing my kids for the next year.
And in case anyone thinks that I'm asking a lot of the school district, I will point out that a) I will be paying school taxes but not actually sending my kids to their schools for another year, and, more importantly, b) they are ALREADY taking other kids from their district to a Catholic school 5 blocks from our school, so this is not much of an additional burden for them.