That’s my father’s saying. Mine is “It’s always something.”
Baguette’s IEP includes bus transportation between home and school. Because she is now able to attend the after-school program (this is a whole story of its own), she only rides the bus to school in the mornings; Mr. Sandwich picks her up in the afternoons.
At the beginning of the year, I called the Special Education department, which is where you’re supposed to call to let them know this.
Her bus comes at about 7:15 each morning, except for when it doesn’t–usually because there is a substitute bus driver, or because there is some sort of maintenance issue. Usually (but not always) we get a robocall about the latter.
Baguette, meanwhile, loves the riding the bus. She is ready ahead of time, can hear it 1/2 mile away (I am not exaggerating), and is almost frantic to get the front door to the house open when it pulls up.
Today, the bus did not arrive. We waited on the porch for almost 20 minutes. There was no robocall.
So I called the Area Bus Supervisor, who was not there, and left a voicemail. Then I called Dispatch, which required a lot of time on hold before I spoke to a person, and many more short times on hold while that person talked to other people before finally let me know that Baguette was not on the route sheet.
Which is weird, because she was on a route sheet YESTERDAY.
Then I got Baguette into the car and called Special Education, who confirmed that their records showed that she was to be picked up in the morning and said that her “profile is active,” but that they did not see any routing information.
And then I called the Area Bus Supervisor again, and actually got a person. She remembered talking to me earlier in the year (when I was trying to get Baguette’s pickup time changed because I refused to cut into her inadequate sleep even more by waking her up before 6:00 a.m.), confirmed a.m.-only pickup, and said that the only thing she could think of was that sometimes “when you make some changes, the system goes ahead and bumps kids off of routes when it’s not supposed to.”
You know what? That’s not a system.
But she did email the person in charge of routing and get them to reinstate Baguette’s transportation starting tomorrow, and she called me to let me know it was fixed.
So that’s good. But to get it fixed, I had to make multiple phone calls to multiple offices for a total of 45 minutes, be late to work, and find breakfast out in the world (thanks, McDonalds!) because I hadn’t been able to eat at home the way I usually do.
This is going to happen again, because this is how it “works.” Nothing’s ever easy, and it’s always something.
OH the frustration. What the heck kind of system is it they have there that just randomly boots students off their routes??? That sounds completely unacceptable.
I now factor in at least one of those sorts of things a day, three a day before the house situations were settled, and it’s frustrating as hell. But if I assume that at least one hour is going to be wasted on something annoying or administrative or just downright nonsensical, I’m a little less angry about. Because there’s ALWAYS SOMETHING.
LAUSD is the largest school district in California and the second-largest in the nation, and it shows.
There’s a Seinfeld episode where Jerry makes a reservation to rent a car, but when he arrives at the airport, they are out of cars. He tells them his was reserved, and they assure him that they have the reservation, but are, unfortunately, out of cars. He then says that they are good at taking reservations, but not at keeping them, which is the most important part of the reservation.
I think LAUSD must have the same problem.
The difference is that when I have arrived at the airport to find that they were out of cars, they still find a way to get me a car, even if they have to borrow it from another agency. Well, I guess it’s actually not that different. I took Baguette to school, so apparently I’m the other agency.