"All of the small schools were closed and consolidated into one school" is pretty common in the USA.

Rural areas have cheaper property (and lower property taxes, which is a large part of how schools are paid for in the USA) which means not enough money to maintain schools for fewer and fewer students as families with some money/decent paying jobs move to the cities. This leads to a handful of well off kids and bunch of poor kids needing to be transported to school someway that doesn't leave a bunch of kids pretty much living at school.

From my life, my mom left for work at 4:30~5:00 AM and got back from work around 6PM. Which was a few hours before the bus came by to pick me up and a few hours after I got back home from school. If she were to drive me to school and pick me up from school... I'd probably be picked up by the police or child protective services as I would just always be sitting outside of school, rain, snow, heat, etc.