Twice a day, Jessica Patrick loads three toddlers into a wagon and instructs the other four kids to hold onto her before the group walks a quarter mile to escort her five-year-old son to and from his Pasadena Elementary School bus stop.
“It makes you nervous with all these little ones holding on to the wagon, especially with all the cars going by,” Patrick said. “We take a couple steps, then we have to pull over into somebody’s yard or driveway to get out of the way.”
Patrick didn’t anticipate this trek becoming part of her daily routine, having watched the school bus drop kids off within eyesight of her house for years. She started a day care business in her house on Norwich Road four years ago, thinking it would be a good way to stay home with her son while still making an income.
Her son started kindergarten this year at Pasadena Elementary School, and to her surprise, the bus stop near her house wasn’t on the bus schedule for this academic year. She’s not comfortable letting her son walk alone, especially since there’s no sidewalk, and since she runs her business by herself, she can’t leave the day care kids to go pick him up.
The Transportation Division follows National Highway Transportation Administration (NHTSA) guidelines when establishing bus stops, according to Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesperson Bob Mosier. Stops along a route are consolidated to help bus drivers reach school on time. Throughout the 2023-2024 school year, buses in this cluster routinely arrived late, causing students to miss instruction, Mosier said.
“The Transportation Division continually reviews and evaluates bus stops throughout the county in order to maximize the efficiency of the overall system,” said Mosier. “In this case, students who live in the transportation area are provided with bus stops that are accessible, safe, and will get them to school on time.”
Bringing all seven kids to the bus stop isn’t a sustainable solution, and Patrick worries about the weather, especially when winter brings darker mornings. She anticipates having to turn away clients with infants.
“I don’t even want to think about pushing the wagon through the snow,” Patrick said. “Who’s gonna want their infant to go out in that kind of weather twice a day?”
Pamela Blades, who lives behind Patrick on Inverness Road, started her own at-home day care, Miss Pam’s Child Care, 25 years ago. The same bus stop Patrick planned to use was once directly in front of her home and would drop her clients at her front stoop. This year, the nearest bus stop is a quarter-mile walk from her home, along a road with no sidewalk.
Blades isn’t willing to haul her entire day care operation to the bus stop. So far, two families have removed their children because they’re uncomfortable with the walk, costing her hundreds of dollars every week. She’s struggling to cope with the financial loss and is sad to lose kids she’s cared for since they were infants.
“My clients refuse to put me in a position where I have to get other children up from nap time and drag them around the block to the corner, so they found other accommodations,” Blades said. “I was crying yesterday because I miss the kids.”
One of those kids is Alyssa Sizemore’s five-year-old daughter. Sizemore preferred Blades’ day care because of the intimate and loving environment she observed there, but she pulled her daughter out because she felt the walk was too dangerous.
“Somebody could observe my daughter walking that path over time and recognize she’s alone. As a mother, you don’t even want to think about what those risks could be,” Sizemore said.
Sizemore and her husband asked for accommodations at work so they could pick their daughter up from the bus stop, but that arrangement is temporary until they can find alternative childcare.
Anne Arundel County Public Schools won’t determine the new bus routes for the next academic year until next summer, leaving Blades and Patrick unsure if their businesses will return to normal.
