Monroe County kindergartener spends 3 hours on the bus; for others it's longer - with VIDEO

Feb. 8—In southeastern West Virginia, in a remote corner of Monroe County just a couple hollers north of the Virginia state line, bus rides to and from school can take up to two hours.

Families in the tiny unincorporated town of Waiteville say bus times have only gotten longer over the years with the consolidation of several schools in Monroe County.

Separated from the rest of the county and state by Peters Mountain, Waiteville is located in a geographic area that resembles a tiny boot that steps out into Virginia.

The community spans roughly 12 miles and is sandwiched between Craig County, Virginia and Giles County, Virginia.

Tammy Hale, whose granddaughter is in kindergarten, said she's tried to approach school and county officials about reducing the time to get children to and fron school, but hasn't been successful.

Instead, Hale said she and others have been made to feel like they are the cause of their children's hardships because they chose to live where they do.

But for many families living in Waiteville, this corner of the county is where their parents, grandparents, and generations before them were born and raised. This is home.

So what do they do?

Do they leave? Do they home school? Or do they keep everything as is?

Hale said she's unsure of the answer but knows that if she could get the county and the state to listen, they could come up with another option for the children.

A long day for a five-year-old

Hale's granddaughter, five-year-old Kolbie Hale, starts every school day at around 5 a.m.

Her parents help her get up, get her ready for the day and have her in the car just before 5:45 a.m.

From their home in Waiteville, Kolbie's parents drive a few miles down the road to drop her off at her grandparents' (Hale's) house so they can leave for their hour-long commute to work.

While waiting for her bus, which typically shows up around 6:25 a.m., Kolbie often falls asleep and is carried onto the bus by her grandmother.

Roughly an hour and a half later, Kolbie is dropped off at Mountain View Middle and Elementary School in Union, which is just under 20 miles away from Waiteville when taking a direct route.

Several hours later, Kolbie gets back on the bus for yet another hour and a half ride back to her grandparents' house.

It's about 5 p.m. when the bus drops Kolbie off. Her parents are typically there to greet her, having just arrived after driving back from work.

Kolbie's parents then drive her home, have dinner and then she's in bed by 7:30 p.m. so she can wake up at 5 a.m. and do it all over again.

There's no time for extracurriculars. No time for family activities.

Just school and bed on a constant repeat with a slight reprieve when the weekend rolls around.

"Monday and Tuesday, she's usually okay. By Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, she is dragging," Hale said.

"And we try to keep the weekends quiet. We don't try to keep her on schedule. The weekends are to rest up."

Two hours too long

Greg Hubbard moved to Waiteville from Gap Mills, which is on the other side Peters Mountain, with his now 15-year-old daughter Arabella, two years ago.

While living in Gap Mills, Hubbard said it took his daughter an hour to get to school by bus. Since moving, Hubbard said that time has doubled.

"Two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening," Hubbard said. "She'd catch the bus at 15 till 6 in the morning and most days she's didn't get home till 5:30 in the evening, sometimes later."

Riding on the same bus that picks up Kolbie, Arabella is one of the first in Waiteville to get picked up and one of the last to get dropped off.

Having grown up in Monroe County, Hubbard said he couldn't believe his daughter had to deal with the same issues he had as a child.

"I was born and raised in Secondcreek, which is on the Greenbrier, Monroe County line, and I had an hour and 20-minute bus ride one way every day just to get to Union," he said. "I thought it would get better."

Unfortunately, Hubbard said the only way to improve his daughter's situation was to turn to online homeschooling.

"It got to be too much," he said. "So we decided to go to homeschool and the bus ride was a deciding factor."

Hubbard said he enrolled Arabella in homeschooling at the beginning of 2024. She was previously attending James Monroe High School as a 10th grader.

"Her not being around kids her age group was tough, but this seems to be the best decision," Hubbard said. "It was a stressful ride there and a stressful ride home every evening, and it just seemed to be a whole lot better situation than going all the way to James Monroe."

A better route

Hubbard said he and the other families tried speaking with county officials and school board members in the past, but it's all been in vain.

"We even had a community meeting over here with the board of education about it and the county commission and we all voiced our opinions and our ideas," he said. "Of course we got, 'Well we'll see what we can do' and that's it. Nothing ever happened."

Hubbard said the meeting happened a little over a year and a half ago, but he doesn't think any of their suggestions were even looked into.

He said one idea that was thrown out was using smaller buses and vans and splitting up the bus routes instead of consolidating everyone in that area of the county into one long bus route.

Even after moving to other side of Peters Mountain, Hubbard said the same bus that picked up his daughter at Gap Mills was the same bus that picked her up from their new home in Waiteville.

"They were going 35 to 40 minutes, the opposite way before they ever turned to come back towards James Monroe," he said.

Hubbard said it would also have been easier for those smaller vehicles to travel the secondary roads through Peters Mountain.

Hale said she suggested the buses take one of the secondary roads towards a town called Zenith, which would cut about 10-12 miles off the trip.

Hale said she's been told in the past that the state wants the buses to stay on well-maintained main roads.

However, she said her suggested route would use the main road to the Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory which is open year-round and had thousands of visitors in 2022.

"There's only one way to get (to the observatory) and if there's that many people visiting, why is that road not better maintained." Hale said. ". . .(The bus driver) brings the bus across there in the morning before she picks up kids, but they don't want the liability with children on the bus."

Monroe County School Board member Sabrina Stutts said she's heard about the issue of long bus rides for Waiteville children, though she doesn't recall any recent meetings or hearing from anyone at a recent school board meeting.

"I know that it has been brought up in the past," said Stutts, a board member since 2020. But I was told, in working with the West Virginia Division of Highways, that they determined that the route that they're currently taking is the safest in the winter. And because one of the roads that may not take quite as long is not always cleared, it's usually, I guess, kind of treated as a secondary road."

Stutts said she thinks there is little the county can do.

"It's my understanding that there's kind of geographically, there's not a whole lot to do about it to make it any shorter," she said.

Hubbard said he understands that, in part, a long bus ride can't be avoided for children living on the county's outskirts, but that was an issue officials should have considered before they started consolidating schools decades ago.

"They consolidated all of our county high schools into one, and instead of putting it in the central part of the county, they put it on the far end of the county," he said.

"It was set up then to where kids could have a normal day. I mean, I can understand consolidation, but if you're going to consolidate you put it in a central location, not all the way on one side of the county."

Regardless of any potential dilemmas, Hale said the kids' needs should come first, and an 11 to 12 hour day, five days a week, for ten months a year, for 13 years, is not in the best interest of any kid.

"These students, they have to do this anywhere from 10 to 13 years depending on if they start in preschool," she said. "But for kindergarten through 10th grade, let's say — so right there's 11 years that they are doing this, 10 months out of the year, and that adds up to a lot of time."