Short bus

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For the Filter album, see, Short Bus (album).

For the film directed by John Cameron Mitchell, see Shortbus.

Photograph of a typical short bus

A short bus is a school bus that is, as the name implies, shorter than a normal sized school bus. The buses are generally the standard eight feet wide and average twenty-four feet in length. They are roughly the same size as a van or minibus, and some are in fact built onto the modified chassis and/or body of a stock regular passenger van or truck by a bus manufacturer ^[1]. The buses are capable of carrying ten to twenty children, as opposed to as many as 77 on a normal sized bus. Some have automated elevator lifts to safely lift wheelchair-using children into the bus without the use of stairs.

Short buses can be used by smaller school districts on routes with few students to pick up. However, a more prominent use is to transport small numbers of children to and from vocational school, those in a special education class within a mainstream school, or schools for children who are mentally challenged. However, some school districts use normal sized buses.

Because of this second use of the buses, "taking the short bus" and other phrases to that effect have become pejorative slang terms used to imply that the subject is mentally challenged (or simply stupid). Some of these terms include but are not necessarily limited to the following: "retard carts," "syndrome trucks", "tard carts", "window lickers", "sped sleds", "sped-ex", "retard rockets", "the Magic School Bus", and "the magic wagon." Also the term "off the short bus" is used, as in, "Where'd they recruit you, off the short bus?"