Buses RULE!!! or Bus RULES!!!

Hmmm..twice in one day?? Couldn't resist - saw a news report on the local station tonight. It was about a Principal in the Winsted, CT school system and how he goes onto the school buses of his elementary students and talks about bus manners, and bus safety. It has always bothered me to be behind a school bus and see kids up and down in the seats, fooling around, and basically misbehaving. And of course there are those newsreels that show the fights that happen. And you have the bus driver that can't really control the situation. Flash back to the 60's, we had bus monitors...they wore white safety patrol badges, they were older students (wow 6th graders!!) But I'll tell you - we couldn't turn around on our seats, we couldn't have a foot in the aisle. If we did - well then it was a trip to see Mr. Krickscuin, our principal - and he was a BIG man, and scary (at least to a little person!). Today bus drivers have been stripped of their ability to control the situation. Maybe the kid's civil liberties are at risk??? Guess it's better to have a kid get the crap kicked out of him/her, than to uphold the rules. My hat is off to Principal O'Connell in Winsted, CT for starting these kids out early with abiding by the rules...I hope that what they are learning stays with them - it will make them better students, and better citizens of the world.