Illegal/Nuisance Yellow School Bus Parking in New Orleans

Why yet another school year has begun in New Orleans, and still the rampant, nuisance parking of school buses in our communities, when not in use, continues. This is like homelessness in this town…glaring straight at us, right in front of our eyes every day, but we act like we don’t see it. This seems to be a nasty, nagging, unexpected consequence of the so-called ed reform debacle in this town, that either you can’t figure out, can’t get up enough courage to admit to and fix, or probably the real reason—it’s going to cost some money that ed-reform folk don’t want to spend. It’s amazing how the local media ignores something so obviously out of whack. Why is that?

Not more than a year and a half ago, New Orleans Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Henderson Lewis assured me and the community, that he was commencing a “study” on school bus transportation that would include a solution to the issue of illegal school bus parking. I can only assume that by now, that study has been completed—am I also to assume that the decision was to disregard the citizens’ concerns, disregard laws, and to let the assault on our quality of life continue?

I keep using the word illegal, as I have been assured by city parking control and the NOPD, that the parking of school buses on neighborhood streets when not engaged in picking up/dropping off of students is indeed…illegal. It is my understanding, that, in the recent past, community complaints have resulted in the ticketing of violators. Crazy thing is…the bus ticketing seems to have only occurred when a citizen called in to complain. And still today, in some areas, as much as 20 big, yellow school buses can be found within a one- or two-block radius of one another, PARKED ON CITY STREETS, CLEARLY NOT ENGAGED IN THE ACT OF PICKING UP/DROPPING OFF STUDENTS. I’m not kidding…look for yourself. Additionally, the buses can be found 10 at-a-time parked in lots not zoned for bus parking, at prominent intersections such as Elysian Fields/Filmore Ave, on empty lots in neighborhoods, on narrow driveways between houses, in strip-mall parking lots, under elevated freeways, etc…

This is utterly ridiculous. This is stupid. I’ve heard visitors to this city question this perplexing practice…they say this could never occur in their city because they have laws…they have standards. It’s embarrassing to have to explain something so absurd. Guess what…we have laws…what we don’t have is enforcement in majority Black areas of the city, where these buses are dumped. If these same buses were parked on Canal Street, Poydras Street, Carrollton Ave., and Audubon Blvd. they would be ticketed immediately. It’s hard to look at this whole issue in a positive way, when clearly this is not even fair to the communities from which the students are being plucked, and hauled many miles away to attend school, to then later have the bus drivers haphazardly dump these same buses in the kids’ neighborhoods. What’s ironic is that a lot of the people that are associated with these schools in whatever manner, don’t even live in the neighborhoods from which the kids travel…so they either don’t have to deal with the trashy sight of nuisance bus parking, or, because of their job, they choose to say nothing.

Well, somebody is saying something….we have been saying something for years…and we are all fed up with the foolishness. It has gotten to the point that residents are jumping in front of buses when they are speeding over the 25 mph speed limit, and challenging the bus drivers when they park illegally. What has to happen before this wrong is righted? We are demanding to know what your plan of action is to immediately end the onslaught of nuisance parking of school buses all over the city of New Orleans.

Remember, if everyday (and all weekend) you opened the door to your home and saw a big, yellow school bus parked right in front of your home, what would you do? What if you discovered that the bus driver doesn’t even live in your neighborhood, yet he parks his bus right in front of your door every evening, and all weekend? Would you just ignore it? I don’t think so. Well, that’s how the community feels. We can’t ignore it…it’s right there in plain sight. How come you don’t see it? It’s time to stop ignoring the community you so repetitively chant that you are serving. Oh, and by the way, Illegal/nuisance school bus parking is not due to the “uniqueness” of New Orleans’ education scene…it’s because you are not doing your job.

– David M. Terrie

This article originally published in the September 3, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.