Picture this: a fellow freshman and his junior sister stand on the side of North Avenue with their thumbs up hoping that a car will give them ride. Suddenly, the hallways of Staples explode with chaos. As papers fly in every direction, students run aimlessly and Principal Dodig projects his voice on the loud speaker in an attempt to settle everyone down.
All of that could have happened if the bus drivers went on strike.
Okay, maybe it wouldn’t have been that extreme. But there sure would have been some excitement.
When Superintendent Elliot Landon sent an email out to the parents that the bus strike might indeed be taking place, I groaned at the thought of leaving my house twenty minutes earlier than usual because that meant waking up twenty minutes earlier than usual. As a typical Staples student, I need every wink of sleep that I can get.
However, excitement and anticipation did build up within me. I imagined the red brake lights lighting up the town as cars anxiously waited in an endless line. I wondered how first period might go – surely teachers and students alike would spend most of the period discussing the morning’s unique event.
I can’t deny that when I learned that the bus strike was not going to occur, I was a little bummed. A bus strike would have taken a dreary, abhorred, typical Monday morning, and given the Staples student body something significant to talk about for once. Instead of chatter surrounding grades, tests, and teachers filling the hallway, students might have had intellectual discussions about why these bus drivers are standing up for themselves.
Most Staples students do not have jobs, and even if they did, they are not often dependent on the influx of money from these jobs. Staples students tend to not be the only source of money in their households.
It’s different for many of the drivers of our school buses.
For many of these bus drivers, the money they make is the money that puts food on the table and pays the rent. As users of the school buses, we should realize that.
For the sake of an eventful Monday, and for the welfare of the bus drivers, all we can say now is: cross your fingers for next Monday.
