School Buses

LAKEWOOD, N.J. - Thanksgiving will be just another day on the road for many school bus drivers in one South Jersey town. Lakewood in Ocean County is asking scores of drivers to work in order to transport about 18,000 Orthodox Jewish students to and from their private schools in the township. State law requires public school districts to pay for transportation to private-school students every Monday through Friday from September through June. In most places, private schools are closed on major holidays.

Audubon Park school board president Judy Vanrell has expressed concern about overcrowding and a lack of discipline on school buses carrying Audubon Park children to elementary schools in Audubon. Vanrell said she believes that there may be more than 60 students at one time on some buses that have a 54-student capacity. While following a bus home one day, Vanrell said, she counted more than 60 children getting on and off the bus, and she noticed students walking in the aisles and hanging out the windows.

Those shamrocks suddenly adorning Medford school buses might look like St. Patrick's Day decorations, but they'll be part of the local landscape for years to come. The Medford School District on Tuesday became the first district in New Jersey to carry advertising on its buses. The five-inch shamrocks belong to a small chain of supermarkets that bought the first ads. "I'm ecstatic," Superintendent Joseph Del Rossi said Tuesday morning at the district's transportation center on Chairville Road.

Forty students from the Orchard Valley Middle School and two school bus drivers were briefly hospitalized yesterday after they experienced nausea and dizziness while riding on school buses that had been sprayed by vandals with foam from fire extinguishers. Fred DeLia, the township's director of emergency management, said the students and drivers were treated at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-Washington Division and released. He added that an employee at the township school district's fenced-in bus lot, at Ganttown Road and Hurffville-Cross Keys Road, called police about 3:30 a.m. after spotting three juveniles climbing over a fence and leaving the lot. A search showed that vandals had removed the fire extingushers on seven or eight buses and sprayed the powdery chemical inside the vehicles.

Schoolkids are learning firsthand what it's like to live in a society that is limiting the rights of its children. Kids are getting this lesson every time they hop on a school bus equipped with a video surveillance camera. More and more school districts are doing this. But the very fact act of recording students' behavior is more outrageous than what's being captured on film. I agree, video cameras will undeniably show who did what to whom. By reviewing "game films," school officials can identify those children who were fighting, those who were praying, if it comes to that, and those who were innocent.

Cherry Hill School Superintendent Philip Esbrandt said last night that the district would know in a few weeks exactly how many non-public school children it would be busing in the coming school year. Speaking at a board meeting, Esbrandt said the board was required by state law to notify non-public school students about transportation services by Aug. 1. The board, he said, will receive bids for all school bus routes today. Non-public school busing in Cherry Hill became an issue last spring when leaflets were distributed declaring that the board was planning to end busing services.

WHEN SCHOOL buses idle for longer than a few minutes, there is a potential risk of pollution being spewed around the neighborhood and schools. This goes for other vehicles or diesel trucks dropping off food for the school cafeteria. For children, health experts state that diesel exhaust presents a serious health concern, especially in asthmatics, and can trigger an attack. Idling trucks or cars may not seem like a huge concern, but the Environmental Defense Fund states that they put 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 940 tons of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere each year.

The Centennial school board has voiced its opposition to making seat belts in school buses mandatory, favoring instead a system of padded seats, such as those in the district's newer buses. At a board meeting Tuesday night, members discussed a recent suggestion by U.S. Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer (D., Bucks) that federal legislation make seat belts mandatory in school buses. Board member George Kelly said that the board was against the legislation and that it preferred seats with padding on the fronts and backs.

The Voorhees Township Committee last night gave preliminary approval to a law to keep school bus drivers from parking the buses overnight at their homes. The committee approved, on first reading, an amendment to a zoning ordinance prohibiting buses in residential areas at any time except to pick up or discharge passengers. "Basically, it's the overnight parking in driveways or streets that's the objection," Mayor James L. Curran said. He said residents had complained about school buses parked on private property.

What started as a child's question led to a successful campaign this spring by a Chester County woman to persuade a school district to buy four school buses equipped with seat belts. When the buses become part of the 42-vehicle fleet at the Tredyffrin- Easttown School District in the fall, the district will become one of only 110 in the country - and the fifth in the state - to have such buses. After receiving a recommendation by a safety committee composed of a school board member, a principal, a bus driver, the district's transportation director and parent Pat Imperato, the school board voted unanimously in March to buy the buses.

School buses of drunken college kids are never a good thing. Especially in Old City. That's the message Capt. Brian Korn of the Sixth Police District wanted made clear after large crowds of college students arrived at a Market Street lounge in yellow school buses Thursday night. "This lends itself to an 'Animal House' atmosphere, which of course is not a very inviting atmosphere for the non-fraternity type of visitors Old City businesses like to attract," Korn wrote Friday in a e-mail to Graham Copeland, executive director of the Old City Special Service District.

School buses of drunk college kids are never a good thing. Especially in Old City. That's the message Capt. Brian Korn of the 6th Police District wanted made clear after large crowds of college students arrived at a Market Street lounge in yellow school buses Thursday night. "This lends itself to an 'Animal House' atmosphere, which of course is not a very inviting atmosphere for the non-fraternity type of visitors Old City businesses like to attract," Korn wrote Friday in a e-mail to Graham Copeland, executive director of the Old City Special Service District.

Those shamrocks suddenly adorning Medford school buses might look like St. Patrick's Day decorations, but they'll be part of the local landscape for years to come. The Medford School District on Tuesday became the first district in New Jersey to carry advertising on its buses. The five-inch shamrocks belong to a small chain of supermarkets that bought the first ads. "I'm ecstatic," Superintendent Joseph Del Rossi said Tuesday morning at the district's transportation center on Chairville Road.

Those shamrocks suddenly adorning Medford school buses might look like St. Patrick's Day decorations, but they'll be part of the local landscape for years to come. The Medford School District on Tuesday became the first district in New Jersey to carry advertising on its buses. The five-inch shamrocks belong to a small chain of supermarkets that bought the first ads. "I'm ecstatic," Superintendent Joseph Del Rossi said Tuesday morning at the district's transportation center on Chairville Road.

After the first of the year, I had the opportunity to visit Baltimore. I say opportunity because I had long thought of it as a harbor and a tunnel to D.C., not a   real   city like Philadelphia. So, when I learned I would be going to Baltimore to celebrate the 105th anniversary of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.'s founding, I was eager to see the city. I took the train from 30th Street Station and arrived about 8 p.m. on a Thursday. When I left Philly, people were walking around downtown, coming and going.

Starting in the fall, Cherry Hill secondary students will begin school a half-hour earlier each morning. Which sounds like no big deal. Unless you've got kids, or are one. "I hate it," says Josh Lovell, 15, a Cherry Hill West freshman. "I hate getting up. " Some parents don't like the prospect of high schools starting classes at 7:30 a.m. either. They cite studies suggesting teens learn better with a good night's sleep and worry that Cherry Hill students already are stressed out and sleep-deprived.

Seventh and eighth graders from Carnell School in Northeast Philadelphia will be relocated from an annex to a former Catholic school in January because of structural concerns about the annex's facade, the Philadelphia School District announced Friday. The district said the Department of Licenses and Inspections had asked the district to vacate the annex at 901 Devereaux Ave. in Oxford Circle that houses the Carnell Middle Years Academy by Jan. 30. When seventh and eighth graders return from winter recess Jan. 2, they will attend classes at the former St. Bernard school at 7360 Jackson St. in Holmesburg.

Seventh and eighth graders from Carnell School in Northeast Philadelphia will be relocated from an annex to a former Catholic school in January because of structural concerns about the annex's facade, the Philadelphia School District announced Friday. The district said the Department of Licenses and Inspections had asked the district to vacate the annex at 901 Devereaux Ave. in Oxford Circle that houses the Carnell Middle Years Academy by Jan. 30. When seventh and eighth graders return from winter recess Jan. 2, they will attend classes at the former St. Bernard school at 7360 Jackson St. in Holmesburg.

The mood was tense, but the music was beautiful. Officials at GAMP - Girard Academic Music Program, the city's elite public magnet school for gifted musicians - have been notified that they will lose the yellow school buses that transport middle school students from points around Philadelphia to the school at 22d and Ritner Streets. So on Thursday night, dozens gathered in the GAMP auditorium for a concert and rally to voice their displeasure to the Philadelphia School District.

Girard Academic Music Program, the elite magnet school in South Philadelphia, draws students from all over the city. Getting accepted to extremely competitive GAMP, the acronym by which it is better known, is no easy task. Of the 1,000 students who applied to the 5th-through-12th grade school last year, 250 were invited to audition for 66 slots. Attending the school at 21st and Ritner Streets is simple, however, thanks to busing for grades 5 through 8. That will change next fall.