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The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
71–80 of 388 posts
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#72Unfortunately we are one of those families. The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.
> takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back
1st grade is probably too young to wait alone. But by 3rd grade I'd expect a child to be able to bundle themselves up.
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#73Californians 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 and services, the answer to Winters’ question has roots in the passage of Proposition 13
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#74I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they wil…
> It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent.
Do they? What's the citation for that law? Who are the schools dismissing the kids to when they walk home by themselves?
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#75This is the kind of article that needs to get into national culture. We gotta change the way we live. I don't know how to get it to happen, but we need more people doing this.
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#76I didn’t understand at the time how much of a privilege it was that I could walk to school where I grew up (with crossing guards for the elementary schoolers, even!) and more importantly that my parents encouraged it, even if it was a bit of a hike to middle and high school without a bike.
Unfortunately we moved during high school and lived something like 15 miles from the new school; at least there was a bus.
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The traffic is caused by vehicles queuing up in line, period. The system you describe isn't necessary to cause the traffic. It's not the root cause.
I’m across the street from a school and there is always one parent that parks in my condo building’s driveway and blocks it. It would be too much for them to be in the line! Then sometimes, they leave their car and go in the school and we are trying to home or leave and they get angry with us!
This sort of thing drives me insane. The people on the polar extremes are (I suspect) part of why we can't have nice things. I've both lived by the school and been a parent, and I badly wish people would practice some empathy and common sense. For example there are some people that will literally sit outside during pickup hours on a lawn chair and yell at people for parking on the street in front of their house (which, btw, is completely legal and there's nowhere else to park within several miles of the school). I've also seen parents park right in front of driveways, blocking people's access to their homes, which is absolutely not ok. It kills me that we can't just have a simple compromise.
Parents: It's never ok to block somebody's driveway! Residents: It's not illegal for people to park on the street in front of your house (assuming they aren't blocking your access of course)
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#78I looked at the author’s Google map view of the 2 miles they couldn’t walk to school, and the enormous grassed area next to the road would have meant I’d be walking that quite happily in the UK.
Right. I walked home from school every day and it was about 4 miles through farm fields and along country roads with blind corners.
4 miles? Luxury.
I used to dream of walking just 4 miles to school.
I had to walk SIXTEEN miles in the wet, cold snow AND pay teacher for permission to come to school!
(edit: It's the Four Yorkshireman sketch. A joke, people...)
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent Schools (EDIT: feel the) need to dismiss the kid to someone. That could be another parent, in the case of carpooling. It could be a bus driver. The root problem is parents chauffering their kids to and from school.
> Schools need to dismiss the kid to someone "Back in my day" the bell went and we walked out the gate and went home.
Sure, yes, didn't mean to imply schools have to do this. Just that a school can satisfy its need to look paranoid while sidestepping the problems cited in the article. The root problem isn't the schools' paranoia. It's the lack of a solid bus system.
Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment
#80Unfortunately we are one of those families. The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.
The post-Covid labor market shift has raised the price of school bus drivers beyond what schools are willing to pay for.