It’s been a long day at school. Students are tired and just want to go home. The bus is the only way for a lot of the student body to get home after school. But, is it worth it?

The bus can be a very inefficient way to get home. Some buses are almost always late and when they finally get to school it can take more than an hour for some of the students to get home.

The bus ride can be very uncomfortable for students. The buses have no air conditioning, and even if they did, they still sit in the sun all day.

So more often than not, the students are more tired from the actual bus ride than they were from school. The bus ride can be very bumpy.

The buses have a system in place where the driver doesn’t feel all of the bumps. But, what about the kids, they feel all of the bumps and that doesn’t make a for a very enjoyable bus ride.

Bowie gets about 15 buses in the afternoon to pick kids up. Bowie has a student body of about 3000. Most of the juniors and seniors probably drive themselves, and more than likely a good amount of sophomores and freshmen that have a ride home other than the bus.

But, that still leaves many students to ride the bus, and the buses may not have enough space to carry all of those students, resulting in students being put on buses that don’t get to their stop in a timely manner.

There is at least one route that passes by a street more than once. This is because the people that design the bus routes want to minimize the left turns that the bus takes. There is probably some reason for this such as gas savings or trying to keep the bus parts in good condition. But, students on that bus have been unhappy with the bus route so far this year.

Many of the students at Bowie that ride the bus have extra-curricular activities. They have to get to practices and classes on time, but they can’t get home in time on the bus. So the only options left are to get a parent to come pick them up from school, or to quit their extra-curricular activity altogether.

It can be hard for parents to pick up their kids at school with the traffic in front of Bowie when the school day ends. Lots of students have had to sacrifice some sort of after school activity because their only option for getting home is the bus. This can be fixed by changing the bus routes to be more friendly to students.

The fact that some buses are often late to school can probably be fixed by coordinating bus routes better between schools. AISD is the fifth largest school district in Texas and there are over 370 bus routes being traveled each and every day. Major changes need to be made to the bus situation at this school.