Inconsiderate drivers and kids who walk to school

Caledonia wrote:

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

Where I live the busses run for free if you are outside the city limits. If
you are inside the city limits there is no option for a school bus. Some
towns do have bus stops for city kids but mine doesn't. We have a public
transit bus that parents can use. It is a $1.50 per one way ride. I drive
my son. I may let him walk when he is in 3rd or 4th grade. At that point
he'll have a younger brother in school so it mostly depends on how
responsible, or air headed ;-), they are together. We are only about 6-7
blocks away but half of those blocks have no side walks and there is one
quite dangerous road to cross. There is no through road which means no stop
sign and he has to start the cross out of someone's drive way. That road
has a 30 mph speed limit and of course people drive faster.

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

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.

If vehicles are breaking the law (well, if the drivers *in*
the vehicles are breaking the law), then it's time to enlist
the Police. They are pretty receptive here in Madison to
staking out the Elementary schools, particularly DS's, which
is on a main artery into the Isthmus. If the police do not
cooperate, a few letters to the editor might be in order.

DS has two intersections that are fairly busy to cross, and
there are crossing guards at each. There is usually a
parent along, or one nearby. We're in an old neighborhood
close to downtown and pedestrians are commonplace, however.
And there are sidewalks. And I think that any motorist
driving expects to see children and is looking for them/


Scott DD 12 (7th grade) and DS 9 (4th grade)

Nikki wrote:

My school has a very lame set up for drop off's and pick ups which
exacerbates the problem. You just park along the street. The problem is
parents come early and just sit there and wait for the bell to ring before
their kids get out. They take up all the space. I often have to park a bit
away and then walk my kid to the fence because nobody is dropping off and
moving on, just parked. Grr.

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
of the jobs the teachers rotated through, so there
were always three or four teachers moving things
along, plus some safety patrols opening and closing
doors and such. Once the line officially started,
if you got to the front and your child wasn't there
yet, you had to loop around to the back of the line
and go through again--no holding up the line! And
heaven forbid you should attempt to pass or anything
like that. The worst problem we have is that some
folks won't get off their cell phones (the school rule
is no cell phones in the kiss'n'ride because they don't
want people distracted when there are kids around).

Best wishes,
Ericka

"Nikki" wrote in message
...
Caledonia wrote:

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

Where I live the busses run for free if you are outside the city limits.
If you are inside the city limits there is no option for a school bus.
Some towns do have bus stops for city kids but mine doesn't. We have a
public transit bus that parents can use. It is a $1.50 per one way ride.
I drive my son. I may let him walk when he is in 3rd or 4th grade. At
that point he'll have a younger brother in school so it mostly depends on
how responsible, or air headed ;-), they are together. We are only about
6-7 blocks away but half of those blocks have no side walks and there is
one quite dangerous road to cross. There is no through road which means
no stop sign and he has to start the cross out of someone's drive way.
That road has a 30 mph speed limit and of course people drive faster.

I never realized how lucky I was until I read this thread! We have
no bus fees and no limits to how close you can live and still ride
the bus. We also have virtually no way for students to walk because
of where the school is located. I wouldn't have thought that was
lucky before, but now it sounds like drop-off is much safer because
of it.

We also don't have the long lines other people talk about. My
kids normally ride the bus, so I'm not often there for drop-off,
but when I am, there are generally no more than 5 or 6 cars in
the line. I think the vast majority are bus riders. Also, the
school stopped enforcing "no drop-offs until 5 minutes before
school." Now you can drop them off a half-hour before the
start of school, and they wait in the hall near the office until time
to go to their classrooms.

And despite our school having been built in 1935, the parking
lot must have been updated at some point. The cars enter
on one side, and exit on the other. It's a one-way loop. And
there is plenty of extra parking.

And most amazing of all, I haven't seen any of the aggressive
driving behavior you all talk about. As I said, I'm not there
most day, so the people who work there probably do have
some stories, but I've never seen anyone breaking any of
the drop-off rules.

Bizby

Caledonia wrote:


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

Caledonia


Here in Madison, buses are free for K-5. Starting in
middle school, if they take the bus, it's a city bus
so they have to buy a bus pass (It's $125 for 4 months)
The upside is that DD now has a bus pass to go to the
mall -- although she hasn't gone there alone, just
yet. I went with her, once, with my free bus pass
(the UW gives them out).

Scott

In . com,
shinypenny wrote:

*
*That's incredibly bizarre! I got my license in PA in 1982, and I don't
*remember anything like this in the manual I studied. And when I went to

Well, it was definitely the rule while I was studying for my license in
1986, when I got it in 1987, when I returned to PA after a long absence in
approx 1990, and of course now. FWIW.

*there wasn't!! It was annoying because as a pedestrian you pretty much
*took your own life in your hands, since cars would not stop... it would

Well, this may or may not be true depending on the intersection - as
previously pointed out, crosswalks near busy pickup/dropoff areas are
often quite dangerous. That doesn't mean it's legal to ignore the
pedestrians!

*I always laugh when people say that Boston drivers are the worse.
*Philly drivers are FAR worse than any driver I've seen around here in
*MA! LOL! Just take a cruise on the Sure-Kill... ;-)

Oh, I totally disagree. My dad grew up in Brookline and we've visited the
Boston area plenty. I would much rather drive at home than with those
maniacs up north. That being said, perhaps it is a case of the devil you
konw...

--
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

wrote in message
ups.com...

Cathy Kearns wrote:

The survey showed me that parent prefer to drive their kids to school,
and
nothing we can do will change their minds.

I suspect part of the reason might have to do with so many more moms
working, and also the fact that every household now typically has one
car per adult.

When my kids were little, I think one major reason I wouldn't want them
to walk is that I would want to know that they arrived safely and were
at school. Since they didn't have cellphones, there wasn't any easy way
for me to know.

The other option would have been for me to walk with them, but that
wasn't feasible. It would have been 15 minutes to one school, then
another 15 minutes to the next school, and then a 20-30 minute walk
back to work -- all in my professional clothes. As it was, it was 20
minutes from leaving home to being at work. Even though I chose both
the schools and the apartment to be walking distance from each other
and from work, it just was not doable in the mornings.

And backpack weight is definitely a factor - even as early as 3rd and
4th grade.

These are all good reasons for driving to school. If one wants to drive
your child to school there are many good reasons, even if you live less than
half a mile away. If you want your child to walk or bike to school, even
from farther away, there are ways to do it. I've seen creative scenerios
from the cello carpool (a mom would drive all the heavy instruments in the
neighborhood to school after school started, to miss the traffic jam, while
the kids biked to school. On the days you don't drive you put the
instrument out on the porch for pickup...) to the walking school bus (one
mom, who likes walking anyway, stops at street corners and "picks up" other
kids whose parents can't walk them to school, but like the idea of the kids
walking with supervision) to neighborhood watch (adults waving and checking
off kids as they go by) to double books (buying the heaviest books for
home, so they aren't carried back and forth in backpacks, sometime parents
do this, and donate to the school for parents for next year, sometimes the
PTA will buy the extra books), to the new kid cell phones, that can only
call or receive calls from numbers entered in by an adult with the password.

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

Bus services in Michigan are provided at no cost to the parent; however, as
long as there is a bus (there is none in our district for elementary school)
you have to live within certain miles from the school.

--
Sue (mom to three girls)

"Hillary Israeli" wrote in message
...
*On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:15:13 EDT, "Claire Petersky"

My son's school drop off/pick up situation is going to make me crazy.

We do not live close enough to walk - it's about 8 miles away, over the
river and through the woods (literally! and we actually drive past his
grandmother's house as an added bonus ). So, ok, we drive. We're
required to make a left into the lot and a right out of the lot - this
means that we have to actually go around the school because the way we
approach, we'd have to make a right into the lot which is forbidden. So,
ultimately what happens is a huge line of cars forms waiting to get into
the lot... and the cars which are just driving down the road NOT wanting
to get into the school... what do they do? They reasonably enough do not
want to sit in traffic 2 city blocks worth for "no reason," so they
decide to just drive in the lane reserved for opposing traffic! This is a
two-lane road. It's also curvy. So when people start EXITING the lot, they
are confronted with the cars going the WRONG WAY. It's a huge problem,
IMO. I mean, I've only been doing it for a week, but several times last
week I feared for my life. Literally. And I had my babies in the car.... I
think the pedestrians have it easy, because the pedestrian access is via a
walking path slightly apart from the parking lot. You don't have to get
near any of this craziness if you walk! Lucky pedestrians.

I asked the head of the school if the school had asked for police support
and she indicated they had, but it was not forthcoming.

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.

"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.