From K-QED.

Whenever Bay curious listener Jules Winters thinks about her childhood growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia,

she thinks of her school bus driver.

My bus driver was Ted for like most of my life.

This one time there was a snowstorm

that just hit like out of nowhere and it was like full on blizzard and I remember like we had been at school maybe only until like nine o'clock and they were like we got to get you out of here like now and so they called all the buses and we got on the bus with Ted and we got stuck in a huge

snowdrift on the way home. Jules doesn't remember being scared in that moment

even though it was probably really stressful for Ted, she felt safe.

She knew Ted would get her home.

He always did.

I have really good memories of taking the bus.

I met my best friend on the bus. she had moved into town like over the summer and was just starting at a new school and it's kind of like I was the first person that she met.

So when she moved to California as an adult, Jules quickly noticed there weren't many school buses moving kids around.

I think it's ironic that initially I was concerned about traffic with like being stepped behind a bus

because that was what I was used to on the East Coast.

Now it's like I'm not going anywhere near that school

because of all the parents dropping off their kids.

I live a half block from a school and trust me,

some of the worst traffic jams happen around school start and end times.

Since Jules has such positive memories of riding the bus as a student, it got her wondering.

Why aren't there buses taking students to and from

school? And that led to a whole bunch more questions. Why is that now the obligation of the family and how do different families accommodate that?

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