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The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

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Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#371

Post by musicale »

watwut wrote: post #362
spenczar5 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is importamt to understand the whole cultural picture of this practice: 1. Neighbors and friends are notified in advance. "If you see my daughter and she looks lost, please help her, she is doing an errand." 2. The destination is usually notified. "My daughter is coming to buy rice, let me know if she isnt there in two hours." 3. This practice is somewhat old-fashioned and rural. Many parents wouldnt consider it t…

In Switzerland, 5 years old walk alone to school. In Germany 6 years old.

TFA seems to be making the point that it could become more common in the US if the school commute were more walkable - shorter and safer from cars.

I have observed many kids walking and biking to and from schools when these conditions seem to exist. Crossing guards help out for crossing busier roads near the school. However, there is also a car queue, perhaps for students who live farther away.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#373

Post by rurban »

> the leading cause of death for American youngsters is from car-related incidents.

I've read some timed ago that drowning in swimmingpools was the leading cause of deaths for kids. So maybe the mandatory protections (fences) there did help. So more schoolbuses could help with their pickup line crisis.

In Germany in our schools such pickup lines are explicitly forbidden. Kids must go by themselves (bus or bike). Helicopter parenting is frawned upon, and recent right-wing rumors in Berlin amongst silly parents about organized Rumanian abduction trucks are actively fought. Dangerous fakenews on social media, probably Russian.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#374

Post by nullc »

nextdoorsv wrote: post #73

Californians should read this too: (TLDR: It's Prop 13's fault) https://www.kqed.org/news/11980715/why-dont-more-bay-area-ki... >California has fewer school buses than in other parts of the country. A survey conducted by the Federal Highway Administration found that nationally, almost 40% of school-aged kids ride a school bus. In California, that number is only 8%. >Like so many questions related to school funding an…

Many-- most?-- states have property tax rates capped for your primary residence. Otherwise property values going up can push you out of your home. Prop 13 goes further-- but many of the communities with the low tax income are precisely the ones full of single family homes rather than expansive commercial/industrial areas.

California ranks 19th in the country in per student spending -- so it's not wildly out of place compared to the rest of the country.

Moreover, Florida bus rates are at 30% and it ranks near the very bottom in per-student spend.

I think you should look elsewhere for the low bus rates than funding.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#375

Post by andrepd »

aklemm wrote: post #5

Well that headline sums it up. After 10 years of dealing with it and wondering "how the f did we get to this point", it's satisfying to hear it called what it is. A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sl…

And bicycles! A bike path takes half the width of a single car lane, there is absolutely no excuse not to have a network of bike paths almost everywhere there is a road. Literally just throw concrete barriers on one of the outermost lanes and you're most of the way there.

The impact this has on the quality of life of everyone, but particularly those that can't/won't drive, is enormous.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#376

Post by andrepd »

alistairSH wrote: post #131
Aurornis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally addressed in the article. 80% of kids live too far away for walking to be feasible.

And yet less 40% of students who live within a mile of school walk regularly. For kids who live Many should be able to walk almost as fast as loading up the car, waiting in the queue, etc.

It may be short as the crow flies but incredibly unsafe due to e.g. having no sidewalk or having to cross 6 lanes of traffic. When everything is designed around the car it's no wonder people have no choice but to drive.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#377

Post by pridkett »

alistairSH wrote: post #158
Aurornis wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we, though? Yes we do, and it's covered in the article. It's not kidnappers. It's distance to school. 80% of kids live too far to walk. It's not that their parents are afraid of kidnappers, it's that they literally cannot feasibly walk to and from school every day.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10917142/ And yet, even for students who live within 0.25 mile of school, a minority walk.

Growing up we don’t have sidewalks on most of the roads around school, but they were mostly low volume residential roads.

What we did have was the sixth grade kids acting as the school safety patrol. Those kids would be dismissed 5-10 minutes early, walk in pairs to pick up these bright orange flags, and then fan out around the school to a number of intersections where they were trained in how to be a crossing guard.

It made it safer for even the littlest kids (I walked to school by myself for half day kindergarten in the 80s) both at the crossing and along the roads because you had kids watching kids.

Today my kids’ school has one adult they hire to work about 90 minutes in the morning and afternoon to watch one intersection at the middle school and one at the elementary school. Would be much easier to have kids do it.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#378

Post by commandlinefan »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #311
commandlinefan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they're great at it, either. My wife is very visibly hispanic, and on multiple occasions when she went to pick up our (half white but not at all hispanic looking) kids, they'd send the wrong kids to the car because there were only two hispanic-looking kids left.

That sounds like the setup for a Simpson's sketch. Apologies for thinking that's hilarious.

Every time it happened, the kids got in the car and just stared at my wife until she called the teacher back.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#379

Post by cogman10 »

ryandrake wrote: post #348
cogman10 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they don’t learn to ignore them - that sounds like lawsuit territory It's the reverse. CPS could be found liable if they ignored a report where there were indeed problems. Also, I have family that work in CPS and it's really not the bad guy everyone that's "anti-CPS" seems to think. They have a HIGH bar to go over before they'll remove kids from a home. Things have to be particularly bad. And even then, the orga…

If a single report from a source of unknown credibility is enough to send agents to upend an innocent person’s life, then that system is broken. The same is true for swatting. A single phone call should not result in an armed police response.

CPS agents didn't come in guns ablaze (that aren't armed). It's a simple investigation and interview with the parents.

It's quite literally the same thing as a cop checking up on someone for a reported domestic disturbance.

It's not as instant jail sentence or separation of parents from their kids.

Like I said, those are literally tools of last resort. Things have to be really bad. Like, for example, a kid that shows up with bruises and stories of violence from the parents won't instantly be removed. That's how far CPS bends over to avoid family separation. The research is pretty clear that family separation is about the worst thing you can do to a kid. That's why instead CPS generally will deploy things like mandatory therapy (if that). Or life skills lessons. And that's assuming they see major problems at the initial interview. If it's a false claim the actual most likely thing that will happen is they'll show up and say "looks like a false claim" and leave, probably ignoring future reports.

It's actually wild to me how anti-cps people are.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#380

Post by ryandrake »

cogman10 wrote: post #379
ryandrake wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a single report from a source of unknown credibility is enough to send agents to upend an innocent person’s life, then that system is broken. The same is true for swatting. A single phone call should not result in an armed police response.

CPS agents didn't come in guns ablaze (that aren't armed). It's a simple investigation and interview with the parents. It's quite literally the same thing as a cop checking up on someone for a reported domestic disturbance. It's not as instant jail sentence or separation of parents from their kids. Like I said, those are literally tools of last resort. Things have to be really bad. Like, for example, a kid that shows…

Family separation is the most extreme outcome. There is a long spectrum of stress and uncertainty between "CPS merely knocks on your door and leaves" and "Forcible family separation." You really don't want to land anywhere on that spectrum. Encounters with the government and law enforcement tend to escalate depending on how busy/belligerent/bored their agents are, so what might be a routine "checking up" today can snowball into a series of more and more serious encounters and harassment as time goes by.

I'm not really anti-CPS as much as I'm anti unnecessary involvement with unaccountable people who can wreck other people's lives.

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