The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.
Putting the bus stop on a major road without adequate place to stand is a problem. But a 5 year old is totally capable of waiting for a bus, given the appropriate location to do so. Even more so in a typical suburb, where there's likely several of them waiting at the same place (when I was a kid, we walked half a block to the corner and waiting in a group of ~5-~15 kids).
> It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.
I don't know how your bus driver would handle it but even back in the 80s, some parents would drive their kids to the bus stop and let them wait in the car until the bus came. As they got older, like 5th or 6th grade, they would be taught to dress warm for the wait.
Our child was being bullied on the bus by kids twice their age because there was no one other than the driver to monitor. I will not subject a kindergartner to that.
One time the bus arrived a full hour late and the people we could call to ask where it was had already went home. I was considering calling the police. Turns out the bus was late because they didn't have enough busses and it had to complete a different route first.
Our school system wouldn't send buses if you were within two miles of the school. We were (seriously) 1.99 miles away, so we had to drive our kids back and forth.
The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.