As school districts across the country shut down rural schools, more and more students are finding that their lives are becoming defined by hellacious commutes--it's common for kids in rural school districts to spend upwards of 90 minutes on the bus each way, each day. The New York Times profiles one of the toughest bus routes in the country:

BLANDING, Utah, May 22 ó The sky is still dark over the canyon lands of southeastern Utah at 5:30 a.m., but two dozen Navajo students are already preparing for school. Their bus driver, William Mustache, is circling his yellow rig, checking the running lights before setting out through the backcountry dawn to fetch them.

Lasting nearly two hours, Mr. Mustache's route is one of the longest, dustiest, most bone-rattling school bus rides in the nation.

Bouncing its way along the washboard roads of the Navajo reservation and a two-lane blacktop north to Lyman Middle School and San Juan High School in Blanding, a 67-mile trip, Mr. Mustache's 24-seater rattles the students mercilessly and kicks up a dust cloud that showers them with a powder of red clay.

At 3:30 p.m., students gathered outside Mr. Mustache's bus for the ride home. Weariness prevailed. Even before the bus was out of town, half the students were asleep. Some cradled their heads in their arms. One boy lay on the seat, his feet splayed in the aisle. Watson, Mr. Mustache's son, was curled in a fetal position on a rear seat. Nobody was doing homework.

"A bus is just not a good environment for study," said Douglas Wright, the district superintendent. Utah educators have not tried to calculate the effect of bus rides on student achievement, Mr. Wright said. "But there's definitely going to be an impact when a student loses four hours out of his day," he said. "Some students who ride the bus do extremely well. Others don't."

Danaman said he struggled to complete homework aboard the bus. He reads, but has given up trying to complete written assignments amid all the dust and rattling, he said.

"Teachers kept saying they were too sloppy," he said.

Students stared in boredom at the bus's shadow, racing through the roadside pinion bushes. One boy drew pictures on his arm.

The NYT reports that the bus routes just keep getting longer in states where rural schools are closing--kids in Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Ohio have all been hit hard--and that commute time for students has become a political issue:

The West Virginia Legislature shelved action this year on a bill limiting bus rides to 30 minutes for elementary school students and an hour for high school students. Long bus rides persuade many students to drop out, advocates for children say.

Not a single word in the article suggesting the parents should take educational matters into their own hands.

Of course, NYT reporters are not known for their libertarianism, and such a suggestion could raise the ugly spectre of homeschooling. That would be Very Bad.

Rarely do I disagree with Erin, but yes the problem is easy to solve. Rural districts need relatively large numbers of relatively small schools. It was done that way for years until big consolidated schools became the latest edu-fad in the 80s. When those school buildings get too old, simply replace them with smaller schools, even if it means doubling up some grades in single class rooms. My second grade class shared a room and a teacher with a first grade class and I came out of it no worse for the wear.

I'm with Tipsy. There would be many advantages to smaller schools, of which this is one.

I'm sure educational administrators will talk about economies of scale, but there are also such things as diseconomies of scale. A wise business friend of mine was fond of the expression "synergy costs money"..in this case, it costs more than money.

Even smaller schools, though, may not help much with *extremely* dispersed populations like the Navajo students mentioned. There are a lot of cases where they would make a difference, though.

Distance schooling, satellite schooling, online schooling--however you do it--bring the schools closer to the students.
How long a bus ride would be too long for these administrators? Four hours each way? Six hours? Eight hours?
It sounds like this problem was allowed to grow through bureaucratic slug-brained nincompoopism. How much worse will it get before somebody gets an idea and tells the unions and bureaucrats to go to hell?

My dad attended a one-room schoolhouse in a tiny community in Mississippi for several years. When his family moved to Tupelo, he and his sisters were tested to see what grade they should be placed in, and they were ahead of their age-mates. There are alternatives to these long busrides, even if the parents can't homeschool. I wouldn't put my kid through it.

Our one-room school had six grades and one teacher in it. Maximum student body 11, minimum five. It was five miles from the nearest small town, and recess allowed fishing, chasing cows, and hiding in the woods till school was out (that succeeded exactly once). It worked, largely because political correctitude wasn't invented yet.

Following grade 6, we on the end of the bus line had 45-minute commutes each way to the jr high and high schools in the big town. So no organized sports or after-school drama for us.

But though we suffered a bit from being those wierd kids from the country with independent ideas (those are held against you in jr high), we did better than most of the big city kids in learning class material, and all did well in college. Plus we could shoot straight, produce functional carpentry and metal works, and were artists with tractors.

Some of us don't vote Democratic, however, so I guess our teachers must have been dreadful failures.

The commenters so far have the right idea.

Recall, though, in the liberal world in which we live, a small school would require, for each teacher, a substitute in case the teacher is ill, a (union) janitor, a (union) cook, registered dietician, nurse, PhD administrator with 10 years of teaching experience (never mind his interest in the academic achievement of his students, or that his talents are in planning and administration -- he must have taught), a supervisor for the janitor, a supervisor for the cook ....

You get the point. Current educational regulations, interested as they are in "protecting" our students, in fact interfere with education.

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/senioryear/
We graduated 30 this year, are getting 10 or 12 in kindegarten next fall and having a "whole town" open house June 19th to recruit families, we need 10 more kids to hold funding. Most of the area schools that consolidated in the '60's have consolidated again. See http://mccallauctions.com/eastmonona.htm
for one's "going out of business" sale. Our biggest problem is unfunded mandates. "It takes a village?" Try community and commitment.

I recently read an article on a small town in Colorado that has been growing an online school. Teachers for the school have to be in the building during class time - though they can make accomodations for individual students - and have to spend a certain amount of time each day on the phone with each student, making the maximum class size about one dozen to twenty students.

Apparently, this school started because of just such a busing problem, and the town has gone from a dying community to a growing one. I have no idea how effective their curriculum is, but the article showed a lot of enthusiasm from the teachers involved, which should help.

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