School is such a universal concept, yet, interestingly enough, everyone has a very unique experience of it that’s hard to generalize. One thing’s for certain, though—everyone had their fair share of unfair teachers and decision making.

This one student was late to school for what seems like a truly not my fault reason—the school bus was late—yet they got slapped with a week of detention because they failed to notify the school about it. Though the issue was resolved, it still left a lot of people scratching their heads. A bit.

More Info: Reddit

It’s safe to say that traffic as a concept isn’t an ideal ecosystem of logistics, and so buses are allowed to be late sometimes, right?

Image credits: Marcelo Cidrack (not the actual photo) 

Apparently, if a school bus is late, it’s also the student’s problem, mostly because they have to now call the school and let them know about it

Image credits: u/gangvith36

This decision making process made a lot of folks scratch their heads, but they managed to help the high schooler who ended up getting out of detention

Image credits: Matthew Michael (not the actual photo) 

A few days ago, Redditor u/gangvith36 in part vented and in the other part shared a story in hopes of maybe possibly getting some answers to one of life’s most pressing questions: what the heck, man?

The story goes that OP was late to school 3 days in a row because the bus was late. Why? Traffic accidents on the route. Now, you’d think it’s an it happens kind of situation, but no. Remember, we’re talking about schools.

What ended up happening is some teacher decided that OP should be held accountable for this. Specifically, they should have informed the school about the fact that the bus would be late. While a very reasonable request, for most, it begs the question of how is that my job? OP explained it best: “all I do is hop on the bus and sit.” That’s the student’s job description, so to say in this case.

Well, the teacher was having none of it, insinuating that they are old enough to be able to inform the school of their temporary absence, and slapping OP with a week of detention.

Since the story hit Reddit, it got an update. Turns out, the student got out of detention and they were thankful to the Reddit community for suggesting approaches in resolving this issue. The student simply sent an email defending their position and was let off the hook. They still needed to inform the school if it happened again, but hey, no detention!

Image credits: Aaron Doucett (not the actual photo)

Some of the solutions that were suggested by the folks in the comments included talking to a lot of important people, namely the principal or the vice principal, getting the parents involved, or simply skipping detention. Bonus points if the dad is sent to detention to give them a piece of their mind.

Many were questioning the disconnected approach to the crime and the punishment. How was the bus being late in any way OP’s problem or even within their responsibility to do anything about it? It made as much sense as forcing 30-something kids on the bus all to text or call the school about the fact that their bus was gonna be late for whatever reason, instead of just the driver doing it.

Others even shared their own school war stories, like this one guy who is still bitter over it since 1987: a PE teacher would always keep students until the last moment before the bell went off and they had to change after swimming and rush down to the other end of the school (a school for about 4,000 students) within about 5 minutes. They were always late, and they always got flak for it from the teacher of the other class.

It went on for a while—a while that netted the post a bit over 24,000 upvotes and a golden award. You can take a look at the post in its full context here.

Image credits: Mary Taylor (not the actual photo) 

Speaking of school buses for a bit, the whole process of creating a school bus route is pretty intense. Someone has to sit down and plan not one, but multiple bus routes to be coordinated among each other, accommodating for student locations, all the while making sure it all happens on time. This is besides considering the cost of hiring personnel and paying them for their time, considering fuel and other costs, while making sure the bus full of minors doesn’t get into serious trouble.

Now picture this: In New York City, in the month of October, 2022 alone, there were about 14,500 instances of school buses being late (that as an increasing number, by the way, jumped from 10,500 in the previous year). On average, students came to school 41 minutes late. How do you manage it on such an epic scope?

The case study goes on to say that buses being late led to some serious ramifications. One freshman was said to have failed a class because of this. This in turn prompted a lot of students to ask their parents to drop them off at school, which wasn’t the most eco-friendly solution, but also not every family could afford such a luxury, whether financially or physically.

All of this eventually boils down to the students suffering, whether it may be on an educational, psychological or social level. There are ways of optimizing school bus issues, mostly by utilizing tech and software that calculate the best routes and making use of GPS and monitoring data to optimize routes even further, while the municipalities can work on the infrastructure and logistics, like bus-only lanes, among other solutions, to help solve the problem. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, leaving many to hope it gets built at all.

But what are your thoughts on this? What are your solutions to buses being late and students being punished for it? Share your ideas, opinions and stories in the comment section below!

The post racked up over 24K upvotes, stirring quite a lot of talk among Redditors about the school, the school buses and sharing their own stories

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