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I 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

• bongodongobob 2y ago
  That's fucking ridiculous.
  • DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    What’s funny is that a lot of modern parents think the latter option is ridiculous.
  • lotsofpulp 2y ago
    That has to be out of the norm. I’ve only heard of kindergarteners needing a guardian.
  • charlie0 2y ago
    What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them and they were forced to do something asinine like that as CYA.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them I'd almost bet nobody sued them. (I'll extend: I'd be surprised if a parent has ever won such a case.) An idiot parent made a stink at a PTA meeting and nobody could be bothered going head to head with Karen.
      • DiggyJohnson 2y ago
        First of all another parent making a stink at PTA is a genuine situation to want to avoid. The facebook smear campaigns I've seen against teachers are incredible. Also, they absolutely have been sued, and if I remember I'll link a handful later when home. Or the even more fun phenomenon is other parents calling CPS on parents when they witness their children walking home unattended, and that report is actually pursued and adjudicated.
    • commandlinefan 2y ago
      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.
      • DiggyJohnson 2y ago
        That sounds like the setup for a Simpson's sketch. Apologies for thinking that's hilarious.
        • commandlinefan 2y ago
          Every time it happened, the kids got in the car and just stared at my wife until she called the teacher back.
    • DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      In roughly 2009 my (mostly very well run) school was freaked out when me and my brothers, all age 9-11, wanted to walk the 1.2 miles home. And honestly the teacher and principal involved were/are among the most reasonable, experienced, pragmatic educators I know. I genuinely think the issue is paranoid parents watching them allow such a behavior just as much as the small chance we get clipped on the sidewalk by an out of control car. Aka they were 99% sure my mom would be fine with us walking home, that we weren't lying about her approval, and that if we were lying and something happened while unaccounted for my parents wouldn't hold her responsible, but we live in a silly society, and people are watching.
  • alwa 2y ago
    Normally I’d ding a comment like this as low-effort, but… I honestly can’t think of any more appropriate reaction. I know I’m behind the times, but I was surprised recently when, at an elementary school in the US, they showed me painted lines on the floor of the classroom, indicating the zones out of the line of fire for somebody shooting through the small, jail-like window in the door… apparently they train the babies on this. I wonder what led up to a system like that—overcompensation for a really big mistake in the past? Abstract fears? The genuine wishes of the parents? (Edit: looks from sibling comments like this [the pickup line technique] might be a hangover from the excesses of the COVID times…)
    • wat10000 2y ago
      There's no incentive not to take unreasonable precautions. If something happens and you didn't do everything people imagine could have prevented it, you'll be fired, you'll be sued, and your name will be dragged through the mud. If you take a bunch of unreasonable precautions and nothing happens, you're fine.
    • fatnoah 2y ago
      > I know I’m behind the times, but I was surprised recently when, at an elementary school in the US, they showed me painted lines on the floor of the classroom, indicating the zones out of the line of fire for somebody shooting through the small, jail-like window in the door It all seems overdone and ridiculous, but when you get a phone call from your child as they sprint from the school building to the safety of the woods due to shots fired in the building, you're glad they did prepare for the "when to stay" and "when to run" decision...and then after you realize that it's even more ridiculous that they had to use that training. That was the longest couple hours of my life, but knowing that the kids got the f** outta there made it a bit more bearable.
      • alwa 2y ago
        Uff. I can't even imagine. I'm so sorry for you and your kids alike. And I guess it's not the precautionary floor lines that strike me, it's that this style of violence really is so pervasive—and we've concluded that it's such an inevitable part of childhood now—that the reasonable thing to do is to reify it in the physical architecture of their day-to-day lives. And in training young minds to imagine themselves unarmed in a situation of combat... Of course we don't get to just choose innocence and be surprised by a style of evil behavior over and over again. But I wonder also sometimes if, just as suicides can inspire people who hear about them, large-scale and permanent institutional response to kids-shooting-classmates gives form and legitimacy to that avenue of acting-out, when disaffected kids think about acting out.
• hombre_fatal 2y ago
  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.
  • bongodongobob 2y ago
    But it does cause it because every car needs to get checked off. When I was a kid in the 80s, there were still quite a few kids that got picked up, but no one was picking them up from the door. They'd park somewhere around the school within a block or two.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • alistairSH 2y ago
      I dunno... I grew up in the 80s/90s and most of us took the bus or walked if we lived within a mile or so. A parent drop-off/pick-up was the exception - going to a doctor appointment after school or something.
      • dylan604 2y ago
        My school said you must be at least 2 miles away before they would route buses for pickups. There were exceptions which my neighborhood qualified as there were no sidewalks, and we would have to cross a single lane bridge to cross a 50 foot creek with no pedestrian path. I lived in the boonies, and it was faster for me to cut through cow pastures in a straight line than walking the roads. We just had to make sure the rancher's bull was not going to notice us (or sneakily hang a red handkerchief on one of your buddies' backpack).
  • jimbob45 2y ago
    And the vehicles are limited by the roads that are available to line up on. And the roads are limited by the school's ability to acquire land. And no reasonable school is ever going to set aside any more land for a car line than is absolutely necessary that could otherwise be used to provide more school building/field.
• chungy 2y ago
  That, and just let kids walk home. It's good for their muscles.
  • Aurornis 2y ago
    Literally addressed in the article. 80% of kids live too far away for walking to be feasible.
    • alistairSH 2y ago
      And yet less 40% of students who live within a mile of school walk regularly. For kids who live <.25 miles, that number is still <50%. Walking a quarter of a mile takes ~5 minutes, maybe a bit longer for a small kid with a large school pack. Many should be able to walk almost as fast as loading up the car, waiting in the queue, etc.
      • andrepd 2y ago
        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.
  • jerlam 2y ago
    Many of them can't walk home from school. As the article says, most students now live too far away from school (greater than three miles), and many rural/suburban areas have underdeveloped sidewalks and traffic systems. If three miles sounds like not a big deal, it certainly is when you have short legs, a backpack full of books, and uncooperative weather. I was lucky enough to walk to/from school for most of my schooling. It was only around one mile and it still took 30 minutes. As an adult I would probably balk at a 90-minute commute.
    • bink 2y ago
      Indeed. My kid could theoretically walk to/from school, but they carry a musical instrument every day along with a backpack full of all of their books. The school doesn't offer lockers anymore because they deemed it "unsafe", so all books and a big Chromebook need to come home each day (and be carried between every class).
• technothrasher 2y ago
  Just letting the kids out en mass is how my son's school worked until Covid. Then they went to the call out the car as it arrives system as you describe, and they never went back. It is so much worse. Thankfully, my son drives himself to school now so I don't have to deal with it any longer.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    I've never heard of this call-out system. It sounds like how you'd run a prison Our schools just open the doors and the kids run to the cars.
    • dylan604 2y ago
      The call-out has been around at least since the early '00s. Just like all security theater, it's easy enough to get around. All you need is the same looking card and the identifier. Most of the time, that's just the kid's name on the card. Some color code the card by class grade as well. I know this as I was helping a friend scoop their kiddos up from school, and they just sent me to the school with the card. Nobody questioned who I was. They just saw the card, radioed the name, and the kiddos were waiting at the curb when I eventually crawled up to the spot. Since the kiddos expected me, there was no "who is that guy" situation. Otherwise, just fake a card and get a prize is how lame this setup is
    • bluGill 2y ago
      The pre-school my youngest has this. The middle school my oldest goes to is much more relaxed. I'm fine with treating my 4 year old like she can't be trusted to run around alone, but my 11 year old can. What I'm not fine with is there is no bus service for the 4 year old, we have to drive her (I bike, but it isn't a great route - we have to cross a busy 4 lane)
  • saghm 2y ago
    Yeah, this seems like a pretty surprising omission from the article. In particular, it stuck out to me at this point: > In fact, in 2022 only about 28% of US students used the school bus to get to school.1 Using the school bus is trending down, as shown in Chart I. In 1969, about 38% of students used the bus, similar to 2009 with 37.5%, and further dropping in 2017 to 36.5%. In other words, for nearly half a century, the percentage of students taking the bus only fell by 1.5%, and then five years after that, it fell by an additional 8.5%. It _might_ not be covid, but clearly something became a factor between 2017 and 2022 that wasn't at least as far back to 1969, and I feel like it's the obvious hypothesis that would need to be addressed first.
• Y_Y 2y ago
  Would be much more efficient to assign numbers to the child abductors instead, assuming that they are less numerous than the legitimate families.
  • dylan604 2y ago
    some (most?) times the abductor is legitimate family
  • analog31 2y ago
    Just give the abductors an NFT that represents the child.
• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > 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.
  • blitzar 2y ago
    > Schools need to dismiss the kid to someone "Back in my day" the bell went and we walked out the gate and went home.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      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.
  • RandomBacon 2y ago
    > Schools need to dismiss the kid to someone. Do they? What's the citation for that law? Who are the schools dismissing the kids to when they walk home by themselves?
• bryanlarsen 2y ago
  For what age? That's similar to what our school has for kindergarten. But if they did that all the way up to grade 6 it would be a giant mess.
  • loughnane 2y ago
    Agreed. We don’t have much of a car line since it’s a walk-to-school neighborhood (90% walk). Still, k-2 are dismissed to parents. Once 3rd grade hits it’s open. Seems like a fine balance to me.
• RandomBacon 2y ago
  > 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?
  • dylan604 2y ago
    The parent has already signed a release form at the beginning of the school year that designated their kiddo as a walker, and did not need the parent present. Just like your DoorDash option to not be needed to be present
    • lolinder 2y ago
      That's still a huge step back from previous generations, where all kids were expected to find their own way to their parents, whether waiting at home, waiting in the pickup loop, or waiting a few blocks away where it's not as busy.
      • dylan604 2y ago
        Maybe you're misremembering some of the details of being a kid, but I know my parents signed forms that told the school that I would be walking to/from school. That was in the early 80s.
        • lolinder 2y ago
          Do you have any memory of any kids being held in place until someone came to pick them up after 2nd grade?
          • dylan604 2y ago
            I never experience being picked up after school by a parent. Both of my parents worked, so I rode the bus or walked. What exactly is your problem here though? The fact that kids are kept in a staging area so they are not congregating in the same space that kids that are actively being placed into cars? That's an issue? You'd rather have that area congested with kids not paying attention doing kid things with their friends after school?
• alistairSH 2y ago
  Yet that are kids that walk at most schools because they live across the street. Or at least there used to be. And how does that work for a high school that has the same ridiculous lines? 15 year olds know which car takes them home, and sometimes they're riding with peers?
• knowitnone 2y ago
  Certainly, at a certain age they do. I remember picking up very young cousins. But after a certain age, parents should be able to write a permission slip that allows them to walk home. Just because radio communcation is used does not do away with traffic jams. You're still driving, you're still lining up, and there are still a ton of cars which is what the article was talking about.