It's truly ridiculous sometimes. My neighborhood has half a dozen schools in it but it's only about a mile in any direction. It has extensive walking paths, sidewalks, crosswalks, lights, etc.
Any child is within an easy 10-15 minute walk to school, and there wouldn't need to be more than 2 or 3 crossing guards to cover all the major roads and intersections. But this would be too easy, instead all the children line up at bus stops throughout the neighborhood, take a 5-10 minute bus-ride to their school and a 5-10 minute ride in the afternoon to get back home.
Parents who want to drop their kids off create chaos as hundreds of cars pack the areas around schools so they can drop-off their children. The local message boards are full of angry parents swearing at each other for driving poorly or violating some kind of unwritten rule during this drop-off/pick-up period. To say it's chaos would by minimizing it.
My understanding is that no child walks to any of the schools, even if they live across the street. The consideration is that it's too dangerous, with all the buses and cars and all. And there's a couple largish roads with people who drive too fast.
So instead of a couple crossing guards, they've created an unsafe chaos, used millions of dollars worth of equipment and hired a dozen or more bus drivers to shuttle kids back and forth to school.
Of course once our pools are open, kids run around the entire neighborhood with complete abandon, dodging hi-speed traffic in flipflops as they frogger their way to their summer fun.
I remember when I was a young child I had about a mile-by-mile area in an urban area I could free-range within. It was naturally cut-off by some major roads, but provided more than enough area for me and my friends to play around in. On occasion, I'd walk to elementary school instead of taking the bus, 3 or 4 miles away. It wasn't seen as a big deal.
When I was about 10 we moved to a rural area, and my local free-range zone exploded to a massive wooded zone full of animals, and creeks and rivers. My mother decided she wanted me to attend an after-school program across the street from my school. It was at an intersection with crosswalks and walk signals and everything. Things went well for the first couple weeks. Then one day, in great alarm, the principal of the school grabbed me before I left for the day and forbade me from crossing the street.
For the rest of the contract period with the after-school program, I had to call a taxi, wait 10-20 minute for him to show up, have him take me the 10 second drive across the street, pay the minimum fare (I think it was $5 at the time). Finally the taxi company even started complaining that this was stupid to the school, but my parents had had enough and pulled from the after school program and just let me take the bus home....where I happily walked a mile down a busy country dirt road from my bus stop to my house to put down my school stuff before heading off into the woods until it got dark.
I remember as a kid I passed about 5 crossing guards each way when I walked to/from school. Now I drive through that same community and the crossing guards have been replaced with speed bumps, bus lanes, and extended entrances to the schools. The walking path through the woods I used as a shortcut is overgrown and I bet if I asked any of the kids there today they wouldn't even know it exists.
I remember one day I was walking home from school and crossed the street not at the crosswalk. By the time I got the crossing guard who spotted me had called my mom and I got a stern ass chewing about using crosswalks (never happened again :)
Any child is within an easy 10-15 minute walk to school, and there wouldn't need to be more than 2 or 3 crossing guards to cover all the major roads and intersections. But this would be too easy, instead all the children line up at bus stops throughout the neighborhood, take a 5-10 minute bus-ride to their school and a 5-10 minute ride in the afternoon to get back home.
Parents who want to drop their kids off create chaos as hundreds of cars pack the areas around schools so they can drop-off their children. The local message boards are full of angry parents swearing at each other for driving poorly or violating some kind of unwritten rule during this drop-off/pick-up period. To say it's chaos would by minimizing it.
My understanding is that no child walks to any of the schools, even if they live across the street. The consideration is that it's too dangerous, with all the buses and cars and all. And there's a couple largish roads with people who drive too fast.
So instead of a couple crossing guards, they've created an unsafe chaos, used millions of dollars worth of equipment and hired a dozen or more bus drivers to shuttle kids back and forth to school.
Of course once our pools are open, kids run around the entire neighborhood with complete abandon, dodging hi-speed traffic in flipflops as they frogger their way to their summer fun.
I remember when I was a young child I had about a mile-by-mile area in an urban area I could free-range within. It was naturally cut-off by some major roads, but provided more than enough area for me and my friends to play around in. On occasion, I'd walk to elementary school instead of taking the bus, 3 or 4 miles away. It wasn't seen as a big deal.
When I was about 10 we moved to a rural area, and my local free-range zone exploded to a massive wooded zone full of animals, and creeks and rivers. My mother decided she wanted me to attend an after-school program across the street from my school. It was at an intersection with crosswalks and walk signals and everything. Things went well for the first couple weeks. Then one day, in great alarm, the principal of the school grabbed me before I left for the day and forbade me from crossing the street.
For the rest of the contract period with the after-school program, I had to call a taxi, wait 10-20 minute for him to show up, have him take me the 10 second drive across the street, pay the minimum fare (I think it was $5 at the time). Finally the taxi company even started complaining that this was stupid to the school, but my parents had had enough and pulled from the after school program and just let me take the bus home....where I happily walked a mile down a busy country dirt road from my bus stop to my house to put down my school stuff before heading off into the woods until it got dark.