Charleston, SC (Roto-Reuters News Service) The announcement last week that 5000 of the South Carolina school buses are more than 14 years old, many with more than 400,000 miles, has provoked Charleston City Council into a momentous decision. Starting next week, the contract for running the school bus system in Charleston County will be taken over by CARTA.

CARTA spokeshuman, Pat, stated: “The first thing we will do is revamp the schedule. The school buses will run continually from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. It’s a waste to have all these buses sitting idle during the day time.”

When this reporter informed the spokeshuman that most school children need to be in school before 8:00 a.m. the reply was: ‘They’ll just have to adjust their schedules.”

This reporter also pointed out that during the middle of the day the children would be in school and there was no need to have buses running at that time. CARTA replied, “But what about the kids who want to cut class but have no transportation? We need to serve the needs of ALL the children.”

When it was pointed out that most school sessions were over by 4:00p.m. CARTA was asked how did they justify running the buses until 8:00 p.m. Pat said, “Haven’t you ever heard of night school?”