Dallas ISD to worsen bus service and fix no problems

I have monitored Dallas County Schools’s and DISD Student Transportation Systems’s failures to provide effective transportation services, and I was an activist in the DCS shut-down effort. I have been interviewed by the Dallas Morning News (link) and NBC 5 (link).

Regrettably, dissolving DCS has not improved bus service. DISD STS continues to provide shoddy service to students and parents.

Instead of fixing its problems, STS now wants to make things worse by regurgitating its failed hub proposal from last year. A school’s SBDM exposed this by sharing that DISD STS wants to “streamline” service. This simply means they will reduce service quality by having fewer stops. In other words, STS wants to make their poor service even worse!

It appears that DISD STS is using its on-time record to say it’s doing a good job. While an important figure, two things to understand: 1. Even if it’s on-time, DISD STS is failing in equally important areas. They are at the bottom of this post. 2. It is easy to manipulate the on-time figure. In the NBC video linked above, DCS is cited as having a 98% on-time record, but it is exposed as fudging that figure. Due to persistently poor performance, DISD STS has not earned my trust, so I want to understand more about DISD’s on-time performance before I can accept it.

Instead of making things worse, I want DISD STS to improve: I have created an improvement plan for DISD STS.

DISD’s insane bus route proposal

UPDATE (7:42 PM): Routes have already changed. Route 3093, while still long, has different schools. Other long routes have appeared.

Despite platitude-filled community meetings, a good sign of dropping a stupid idea, and vague promises, Dallas Independent School District declined to fix its long, bizarre bus routes.

For example, this is an actual bus route for 2019-2020 for Sudie Williams TAG:

Route 3093 for Sudie Williams TAG Vanguard & Academy (link to map)

Google Maps says this seven-school, 24-mile route (!) takes 1 hr 10 minutes. DISD thinks it will only be 53 or 54 minutes. Hmm, what’s DISD’s logic? Slower vehicle (bus) + pause for several minutes at each school (load/unload) = 16-17 minutes faster drive time? Just like last year, a hefty dose of magical thinking!

All the schools served by route 3093, along with DISD’s laughable stop times. Morning pickup times on left, evening dropoff times on right.

This isn’t the only one. Many routes are long and complicated.

With half of his brain tied behind his back, one of my fans created a 10% faster route simply by reorienting the stops. And by removing one stop, he made a 30% faster route.

DISD Transportation repeatedly promised to fix this. They declined to. We’re seeing more of the same.

Superintendent Hinojosa, your “drastic changes” failed to deliver. Time for more firings.

(In case DISD makes further changes, here’s my own archival copy of the “special programs” bus-routing spreadsheet that shows the state of the routes when I saw them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103Y2aey36uDkAszoax7x8ZKBSMYsWWknrlKVrgmucwI/edit?usp=sharing.)

Dallas’s Carmel Car Wash sucks

Dallas’s Carmel Car Wash chain sucks for three reasons.

Problem 1: Their product is bad. I have an Infiniti G37 and a Honda Odyssey. For both vehicles, Carmel’s equipment isn’t able to get a good clean. Vertical surfaces, and some other parts, get missed unless the beginning-of-line attendant remembers to manually brush-wash those parts. Often, that attendant forgets or does a poor job.

Overall, their equipment just doesn’t do a good job. Here’s the result of a Sunday (July 14, 2019) wash on my van:

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that van just needed a second run through the equipment? I admit, it was pretty dirty. That leads to…

Problem 2: They don’t stand by their product. I went back to Carmel to ask for that second run on my van. (If you’re from Carmel, it is the Mockingbird Lane location. I was there on 7/16/19 around 5:30 PM and went to the left lane.) I presented my receipt, asked for a re-run, and was told they do not stand by their $7 wash, so I would need to pay for another $7 wash.

Problem 3: Plus-sales are out of control. Every time you do the basic, $7 wash, you’ll get hassled about gift cards or car-wash extras that Consumer Reports says are not worth it. This started a few months ago. I am tired of it!

We’re done, Carmel Car Wash. Not even #friendzone. Just done.

Adding books to Kindle Freetime accounts

If you want to add an e-book to your child’s Freetime account, it’s more complicated than delivering it to the device after you buy it. I cannot find any documentation, so this is how I did it:

  1. Visit www.amazon.com. Log in if you haven’t already.
  2. Hover over Accounts & Lists and select Your Content and Devices.
  3. Click Show Family Library.
  4. Place a checkmark next to all books you want to share with your child’s Freetime account.
  5. Click Add to Library.
  6. At the bottom of the Add to Library dialog, select the child you want to have the books.
  7. Press OK.

(EDIT (2020-08-07): This paragraph may be an unnecessary step. Let me know in the comments.) After that, you then need to pick up your kid’s device and exit Freetime. Restart Freetime, and when you do so, you’ll check the box for the book you just purchased.

Google files: easy to overshare!

Do you want the whole world to see your shared Google files? It’s easy to make this mistake. You can avoid by only sharing with people who have Google accounts. Here’s how.

When viewing a Google file, on the top right is a Share button. Click on it to open the Share with others dialog. That is where you share your file.

In this dialog, if you use the Get shareable link feature, you made a link that anyone can use to see your file:

Share with others dialog with link sharing enabled

Anyone with that link can see this file!

Oh, you only emailed that link just to one trusted friend? What if his email is hacked? What if he shares the link, even accidentally? Suppose the link ends up where Google’s search engine can see it? The file will be in Google’s public search!

Fixing this is easy. In the Share with others dialog, click the Anyone with the link… dropdown, select OFF, then click Done.

Another way to over-share is when you add people. Let me be clear: it’s more secure to add people instead of sharing a view link. When you add people, the person you shared with gets a link to the document, but Google won’t allow viewing unless the person is signed in with the account you shared the link to. If the recipient shares the file’s link with someone else, that other person cannot view the document!

A catch: the people you share with must have Google accounts.

Watch this. It shows what happens when you share with someone without a Google account:

What happens when you share a Google file with someone who doesn’t have a Google account

Did you see this text: “Link sharing is ON. Anyone with the link can view” Don’t use that! If someone doesn’t have a Google account, then Google has no way to know if that person is who is viewing the file. Therefore, it sends the same kind of link mentioned above: it lets anyone view the file!

What does “Google account” mean? It is an account used to sign in to Google systems. The account name is the person’s email address. People with Gmail addresses already have a Google account. People with other email addresses may set up a Google account at https://accounts.google.com/SignUp.

How to avoid sending a view link: When you share to people who don’t have Google accounts, always select the Send an invitation option. With that, the recipient gets an invite to set up a Google account. Until that is done, the link won’t let the recipient view the file.