Inconsiderate drivers and kids who walk to school

In article ,
"Cathy Kearns" wrote:

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
news
I'm sort of amazed at all these schools that
seem to have lots of people dropping off/picking up
and yet seem to have little control over that process.

Here is where I think the problem is lack of experience. The schools
themselves don't want responsibility for the drop-off area, the teachers in
our district don't feel they are paid enough to work the drop-off, so it is
left to the PTA or parent volunteers. (And yet, to remodel the schools, the
EIR requires traffic monitors in the parking lots....) So, when designing
the traffic drop-off plan for our school I went around and checked out how
other schools were doing it. There were more than a few whose entire model
was having a parent volunteer wear a bright vest and yell at people. Not
surprisingly, those were also the schools that reported their own parents
almost ran down the traffic monitors, sometime even on purpose. The model I
found worked the best, and implemented at our school was greeters. Greeters
in orange vests (and umbrellas if the weather was bad) would wave cars onto
the curb, open car doors, and grab instruments/backpack/projects while the
kids climbed out. Then the kids could scramble out fast, the driver didn't
need to leave the vehicle to get bulky items from the trunk or free kids
riding in the "way back". If a kid needed two trips to get everything to a
classroom the volunteers would either help carry, or watch the items until
the kid came back for a second trip, so there weren't cars abandoned in the
drop-off while parents ran cupcakes in. Not only were we never run over, we
got nothing but compliments. A smile and an offer to help go a long way in
the early morning drop-off stress.


In a couple of the schools my kids have been in, there IS no "drop off"
area -- just the street in front of the school. In those places, I
would park a block over, and have my kids walk an extra block, but I'm
not sure there's any way for the school to make/enforce rules about
where people can park (or how long or whatever) on a public street.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

Cathy Kearns wrote:

Here is where I think the problem is lack of experience. The schools
themselves don't want responsibility for the drop-off area, the teachers in
our district don't feel they are paid enough to work the drop-off, so it is
left to the PTA or parent volunteers.

I don't think it ever crossed our principal's mind that
it wasn't his responsibility to ensure the safety of the children
during drop off and pick up. It's hard for me to imagine that
a school would be willing to have that sort of liability exposure,
regardless of whether less mercenary arguments would have
swayed them ;-) As far as the teachers not wanting to do it,
I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. At least here, the
teachers are required to be at school by that time anyway,
and it's no different from recess or lunch duty, which they
also cycle through.

The model I
found worked the best, and implemented at our school was greeters. Greeters
in orange vests (and umbrellas if the weather was bad) would wave cars onto
the curb, open car doors, and grab instruments/backpack/projects while the
kids climbed out. Then the kids could scramble out fast, the driver didn't
need to leave the vehicle to get bulky items from the trunk or free kids
riding in the "way back". If a kid needed two trips to get everything to a
classroom the volunteers would either help carry, or watch the items until
the kid came back for a second trip, so there weren't cars abandoned in the
drop-off while parents ran cupcakes in. Not only were we never run over, we
got nothing but compliments. A smile and an offer to help go a long way in
the early morning drop-off stress.

That's essentially what they do at our school. There are
a few teachers stationed around (entrance/exit to the kiss'n'ride
area, where the cars are stopping, etc.) and the safety patrols
(kids) are the ones that open/close doors and help the kids with
their stuff, if need be. The line moves fast and is very efficient.
If you want to haul a bunch of stuff in, you'd normally park on
the street and walk it in, though if our kiss'n'ride had to
snake along the street, a couple extra safety patrols who could
help run stuff would solve the problem.

Best wishes,
Ericka

"shinypenny" wrote:

Three years ago, we lived within walking
distance of the grade school, except that the girls would've had to
cross a very busy major thoroughfare first - and there were no
crossing
guards or lights. In the AM this thoroughfare has heavy, swift
traffic.
It wasn't safe. So I would drive them.

Several years ago (before I was a parent) they closed the elementary
school in the neighborhood where I was living. The school the children
were assigned to was not very far away, but the walk crossed a street
where cars came whizzing off a major thoroughfare onto a quieter
residential street. The school district refused to put a crossing guard
there, _because_it_was_too_dangerous_!!! ;-P

Peggy

--
Many wise words are spoken in jest; but they don't compare with the
number of stupid words spoken in earnest. --- Sam Levenson

"Caledonia" wrote in message
oups.com...
Jeanne wrote:
I think, for some reason, people think it's unsafe for children to be
riding the bus or walking so they end up chauffeuring their children to
school. I'm not talking about working parents who drop off their
children at the school's before-care or students whose neighborhoods
lack sidewalks - these are cases where parents need to drive their
children.

The deal here, where our buses are half-filled, is that you have to pay
$225/child for a bus pass for bus stops within 2 miles of the school
for K-5, and $225/child for a bus pass for 6-12, regardless of distance
from the school. For a lot of folks, that $225 (or $550, or higher)
works out to make driving a more economical choice, especially if they
live 2+ miles from school and have multiple children in grades 6-12.

There are no sidewalks here, and we're at 1.97 miles, so we pay for the
bus. I keep thinking that I'll start walking my DD (1st grader), but
realized that this would be 8 miles/day with her younger sibling in a
stroller, and it wouldn't be do-able in the winter (the stroller, that
is). So for now she's a schoolbus rider. If I had multiple children in
the elementary grades, though, it'd require some hard thought about the
cost of the bus, the hassle of walking, and the financial outlay.

Out of curiousity, are public school busses 'free' (included in the
cost of the school versus paid for like an activity) there?

In our case, we can't even GET a public bus. Public bus service in
California in general is spotty and minimal at best, unfortunately.
Generally speaking, you have to be a minimum distance away from the school
(usually a mile or more) even to qualify for the privilege of *paying* for
bus service. The only exceptions to that are if you have a child who goes to
a school that isn't your neighborhood school for either "program
improvement" under NCLB or due to "special needs".

In our case, we live only about a half a mile from the school, which means
we don't have the option of paying for the bus. It's really not safe,
however, for the children to walk to school because our neighborhood has no
sidewalks and the street the school is located on (and where our kids would
do all but about 300 feet of their walking) is the major thoroughfare
through the neighborhood with a speed limit of 35 mph (and, of course, no
one pays the slightest attention it; cars doing 45-50 mph is more common
than one doing 35). There have been several pedestrians killed while walking
on the shoulder of this particular street over the past decade or so, which
means our fears are not exactly groundless.

So, guess what? We chauffer the kids to and from school, as do the vast
majority of other parents in the neighborhood. Which, of course, is
responsible for a significant amount of the traffic on the road into/out of
school that makes walking unsafe. Vicious circle, really.
--
Be well, Barbara

-L. wrote:
Claire Petersky wrote:
My daughter walks or rides her scooter or bike to her elementary school
every day. Because the route goes on a footpath, it's only a quarter mile;
the route by motor vehicle is four times longer. The biggest problem right
now the kids walking is all the other parents who drive. She only has one
street to cross, and of course there's crossing guards, but the parents
still do not seem to respect the pedestrians in the vicinity.

Someone alerted me to this website: http://drivetoschoolhallofshame.com/
that has photographs from a different school, of all the chaos caused by
parents who are driving their kids to school. What is this craziness? WIWAK,
the only time you got a ride from school was when you were sick or
something.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky

This is a HUGE problem in our neighborhood. The elementary school is a
couple of blocks from our home. The parents use our street as a
thoroughfare, and they SPEED down the street at 40-45 mph when they are
going to drop off or pick up their children. The city refuses to put
in speed bumps, and says if we can petition 15 people to sign for it,
and PAY FOR IT OURSELVES, we can put one in. I am terribly disturbed
because there are at least 8 children 4 years old and under within a
two-block span of our street. It is just a matter of time before
someone is killed or hurt. I have called the police and asked for
speed traps 4 different times since we have lived here, but it does no
good. I haven't called the school, but that may be my next approach.


Our problem is also our neighborhood. We don't live near the school
and our neighborhood alone fills 2.5 large school buses. Cars go
speeding past the bus stop as if there are no children standing there.
I'm talking about while the kids are crossing and standing at the bus
stop. For this reason alone, I still walk my 6th grader to the bus
stop. Who else will stand and glare at the speeders???

I have literally been crossing a street with her and slowed her down as
I saw a car approaching. The car sped up to get past us rather than
slowed down to let us (the student!) cross. Chaps my hide.
-L.

dragonlady wrote:

In a couple of the schools my kids have been in, there IS no "drop
off" area -- just the street in front of the school.

This is how my school is.

In those
places, I would park a block over, and have my kids walk an extra
block, but I'm not sure there's any way for the school to
make/enforce rules about where people can park (or how long or
whatever) on a public street.

I'm assuming that is the problem here. The street is a whole city block
long. There really should be ample space for everyone to drop off their
kids. There is no line though - you just pull in anywhere you can find a
space, as if you were parking on any old street. Of course if you arrive
and it is a little cold (like it is most of the time in South Dakota) they
want to sit and chat in the warm car for 15-20 minutes and hop out at the
last second. The problem is that not all 200 students (I totally guessed at
that number!) getting dropped off can all hop out at the last minute ;-)
Not that many cars fit. I wish the sitters would park on the opposite side
of the street so that the instant droppers could just pull up, drop off,
take off.

I love the greeter idea. I plan to join the PTA, maybe I'll mention it in a
year or two ;-) Apparently my neighbor tried to get a parent volunteer
crossing guard when her kid was there (she was PTA president) but the school
nixed the idea due to liability reasons or something. I imagine there would
be great resistance to not being able to park along that street and I'm not
sure there is anything that can actually be done about it since it is a
public street. I think the kids are mostly encouraged to play on the play
ground until the bell rings (unless they eat breakfast). It may help a lot
if the kids could just go into the classroom anytime after 8:15. The bell
rings at 8:35.



--
Nikki
Hunter 4/99
Luke 4/01
EDD 4/06

In ,
Cathy Kearns wrote:

*You might consider dropping off about a quarter or half mile away along the
*walking path. You son would get a little exercise, pick up the benefit of
*walking or biking, which is the fresh air and exercise waking them up before
*school, and you get to skip the traffic pattern.

Heh. I like your idea of "walking path," but it's not the reality of our
walking path. The path of which I spoke is a path from the nearest
intersection (about 10 or 15 "sidewalk squares" away from the parking lot)
to the sidewalk that runs along the school-edge of the parking lot. Hardly
room for exercise, and I'd still be in the traffic-crazed parking lot
block

-h.

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

In ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

* I'm sort of amazed at all these schools that
*seem to have lots of people dropping off/picking up
*and yet seem to have little control over that process.
*Even before the renovation that made for a better
*kiss'n'ride area, our school still did the best it
*could to have a reasonably safe process. It was one

Well, our school does the best it can, too - they have rules about
when/where/which direction you can drive; they have teachers stationed
curbside in the lot and an administrator at the driveway and the footpath
entrance... but it does not help. As per my previous post, the school
can't control the maniacs who don't like the line extending into the
street, and I don't really see how they could do anything to avoid having
a line in the street, either!

h.

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

It's also hard to adequately supervise drop-off and pick-up areas using
teachers. Realistically, when parents are picking up/dropping off is ALSO
when they want to talk about their child, which means that the particular
teacher is out of commission. Or a child needs to get their homework
assignment, or you're still dealing with a disciplinary incident which needs
to be resolved before the child goes home, or a child is pulling on you to
use the phone to call mom, or 5000 other things. Then there's the kid
sorting-the walkers, who need to go out one door. The kids going to the
after school program, or to tutoring (two different meeting points) or to
choir or dance team or sports practice somewhere in the school building. The
kids riding the district school busses, and the kids riding the daycare
busses. One teacher might have kids going 8 different meeting places BEFORE
releasing kids to parents who pick up individually, and she's legally
responsible for all of them until they're turned over to the responsible
adult. Meanwhile, the parents who want to pick up their kids are waiting,
and getting annoyed, and the line is getting longer, and longer. We have a
nice, one way circular driveway, but few parents want to wait in line what
can easily be 30 minutes or more to pick up their child in an orderly
manner. So, they park on the street and attempt to walk over to pick their
child up, cutting through the cars waiting to drive up. They park in the
teacher's lot, often blocking other cars in, and complain that we won't
release their child to go around through the parking lot instead of at the
drop off point. They attempt to go through the bus lane, and complain that
we won't release their child in the bus line.

Having said that, I think we do a pretty good job with walkers-walkers are
released first, and we have teachers' aides who escort the youngest children
to the crossing guard (where, usually, they meet up with their older
siblings for the walk home). This avoided having older children running
around the primary wings picking up little brother, sister or cousin.


Donna DeVore Metler
Orff Music Specialist/Band/Choir
Mother to Angel Brian Anthony 1/1/2002, 22 weeks, severe PE/HELLP
And Allison Joy, 11/25/04 (35 weeks, PIH, Pre-term labor)
"Cathy Kearns" wrote in message
...

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
news
I'm sort of amazed at all these schools that
seem to have lots of people dropping off/picking up
and yet seem to have little control over that process.

Here is where I think the problem is lack of experience. The schools
themselves don't want responsibility for the drop-off area, the teachers
in
our district don't feel they are paid enough to work the drop-off, so it
is
left to the PTA or parent volunteers. (And yet, to remodel the schools,
the
EIR requires traffic monitors in the parking lots....) So, when designing
the traffic drop-off plan for our school I went around and checked out how
other schools were doing it. There were more than a few whose entire
model
was having a parent volunteer wear a bright vest and yell at people. Not
surprisingly, those were also the schools that reported their own parents
almost ran down the traffic monitors, sometime even on purpose. The model
I
found worked the best, and implemented at our school was greeters.
Greeters
in orange vests (and umbrellas if the weather was bad) would wave cars
onto
the curb, open car doors, and grab instruments/backpack/projects while the
kids climbed out. Then the kids could scramble out fast, the driver
didn't
need to leave the vehicle to get bulky items from the trunk or free kids
riding in the "way back". If a kid needed two trips to get everything to
a
classroom the volunteers would either help carry, or watch the items until
the kid came back for a second trip, so there weren't cars abandoned in
the
drop-off while parents ran cupcakes in. Not only were we never run over,
we
got nothing but compliments. A smile and an offer to help go a long way
in
the early morning drop-off stress.

Donna Metler wrote:
It's also hard to adequately supervise drop-off and pick-up areas using
teachers. Realistically, when parents are picking up/dropping off is ALSO
when they want to talk about their child, which means that the particular
teacher is out of commission.

This was an issue in preschool carline, but it has never,
ever been even the smallest bit of a problem at the elementary
school. The odds that your child's teacher is the one out there
is very slim to begin with, and the teachers simply do not talk
to the parents at all, aside from perhaps saying "hi" if the
windows are open. The teachers are working very hard to supervise
the area. It is the safety patrols (students) who are opening
and closing doors. The only communication I've ever had with
a teacher in the kiss'n'ride is for one to tell me to go around
to the back of the line because my kid didn't show up as soon
as I pulled into a loading spot!

Or a child needs to get their homework
assignment, or you're still dealing with a disciplinary incident which needs
to be resolved before the child goes home, or a child is pulling on you to
use the phone to call mom, or 5000 other things. Then there's the kid
sorting-the walkers, who need to go out one door. The kids going to the
after school program, or to tutoring (two different meeting points) or to
choir or dance team or sports practice somewhere in the school building. The
kids riding the district school busses, and the kids riding the daycare
busses. One teacher might have kids going 8 different meeting places BEFORE
releasing kids to parents who pick up individually, and she's legally
responsible for all of them until they're turned over to the responsible
adult.

That's not the way it works for us. The teachers stay
in the classroom, except for the few that are working the
bus/kiss'n'ride area (other staff watch their kids). The
kids are dismissed group by group (walkers, SACC, busses
by number, car line). If some busses are late, those kids
are called to the gym to wait while supervised by whichever
teacher or administrator has that duty. So, a child who is
being picked up will walk from his or her classroom to the
kiss'n'ride area, where a staff person will be watching the
mob of kids as they wait for their parent to get to a
loading spot. Or, the bus kid will go to the bus loading
area when the appropriate bus number is called. Or, the
walker will go to the appropriate door to exit. Or, the
kid going to an activity will go when that activity is
announced.

Meanwhile, the parents who want to pick up their kids are waiting,
and getting annoyed, and the line is getting longer, and longer.

Our line moves, period. If your child isn't there
when you get to the front of the line, you have to circle
back.

We have a
nice, one way circular driveway, but few parents want to wait in line what
can easily be 30 minutes or more to pick up their child in an orderly
manner.

How large is your school?! It's never taken me 30 minutes
to pick up in car line, unless I arrive early for some reason.
If I show up after the time the riders are dismissed, I've never
waited more than 10 minutes, and it's a fairly large school.

So, they park on the street and attempt to walk over to pick their
child up, cutting through the cars waiting to drive up. They park in the
teacher's lot, often blocking other cars in,

Our kiss'n'ride snakes through the teacher's parking
lot. If a teacher wants to leave immediately when the students
are dismissed, the teacher will have to back out into the
car line (folks make room), and then go through the car line
to get out. Sure, it will delay them by a few minutes, but
again, nothing horrible. If they know they have to leave
early, they can park out on the street in the morning and
then they won't have to deal with it. Most teachers don't
leave school until after car line is done with anyway.

Best wishes,
Ericka