Uggh... Carpool!
I'm surviving Kindergarten. My daughter is doing great, but I'm having a bit of a problem adjusting to the new regime. It's hard being expected to be somewhere on time everyday! Preschool was a lot less forgiving if I showed up 5 min late every third time. But in kindergarten there's consequences for tardiness. They wrote out said consequences for me on a sheet of paper in the welcome to school packet. The consequences are bad. I could get called into the principle's office if I don't tow the line. I've already had to check my daughter in late once, because I forgot about Friday early-out day, which for afternoon kindergarten is actually early-in and early-out day. I can only hope it won't go on my permanent record.
My biggest complaint is definitely picking up my daughter and the other kids in the carpool twice a week. Today I arrived at the school about 6 minutes before the final bell rang, at approx 2:19. I arrived back at home at 2:50 PM. I live 1.3 miles away. To put in in perspective, it takes me 4 min to drive to school and drop off my child for afternoon kindergarten (which is pleasantly uncrowded at that time of day). It takes me 31 min to do the reverse.
When we bought this house, I saw the shiny elementary school across the street and assumed that my daughter and future children would be attending that school. I checked the school's boundary maps to make sure our house was included, and checked the test scores of this school against several others in the area. Everything checked out, and I felt secure purchasing the house. After we moved in, our neighbors told me they had lost the fight some time ago, and the kids in our neighborhood were being bused to another school because the newer housing somehow won the right to attend that school. Our subdivision had been kicked out. The boundary maps on the school district's web site were apparently out of date, making all of my careful research useless. I took deep breaths and told myself that since my daughter was only 6 months old, plenty of things could change before it was time for her to go to kindergarten.
Flash forward 5 years. They've built another Elementary School, which is closer to the one the kids in the neighborhood had been bused to, but still not as close as the taunting school across the street. This new school is 1.3 miles of walking distance away, however, they calculate distance as if our children fly to school, and that makes our home under 1 mile away. Thus my kindergarten age daughter is within "walking distance" of the school, despite the fact that she would have to cross two very busy and dangerous steets to get there. No matter what label they place on the distance, there is no way on earth my child is walking it, and I've settled for the best solution I can find. Carpooling.
So here's how carpooling works at my school. I'm curious to know if this genius system is implemented everywhere, or if my school has a market on the most frustrating experience in existence. I arrive at the school 6 minutes before the final bell rings. I park two blocks away at the end of the line of cars waiting to pick kids up in the "car pool" lane. There is also a "drive-through" lane, but there is supposed to be no stopping in that lane. I wait for 10 minutes for children to start trickling out of the school. The people who camped out in their cars the night before start picking up their kids at the front of the line. We inch up a few spaces as a couple of cars leave from the front. But then we run into a problem. Some people follow the line of cars to the "pickup area" at the front of the school. But others have their kids just start walking until they see their car. So we've got some people waiting, some people trying to inch up, people leaving the "carpool" lane to jam their way into the "drive-through" lane, and people in the "drive-through" lane trying to jam their way into spaces that are left by deserters in the "carpool" lane. So people like me, whose carpool children have been trained by my other carpool partners to wait by the tree, are left to judge whether cars are going to pull up, or if I have to hop over them to an empty space. Then I have to venture into the "drive-through" lane and hope that someone won't steal the open spot before I get there. I don't want to hop prematurely and lose my place in the line that's not really a line. By the time I jump around all the people whose children have walked to them by this point, and make my way to the pick-up tree place, I'm always one of the last people to be picking up my kids.
To make matters worse, I got a talking to from the aide today for breaking procedure. Apparently, despite the fact that I got out of the car to walk my child from the sidewalk to the driver-side passenger door, children are only allowed to enter the vehicle from the side closest to the sidewalk. In exasperation (more from the whole experience than this one particular annoyance), I voiced my irritation to the aide that I have 6 kids (2 of which are already buckled in car seats in the car) to cram in the back of my mini-van and having them all enter through one door, and forcing half of them to crawl over my buckled children doesn't make life any easier. "It's for her own safety" was her snide reply. Well you know what? If the school were really concerned about my daughter's safety, maybe they could find a nice safe little yellow bus to come pick her up and take her to her house, a very un-safe 1.3 miles of "walking distance" away.
After I chaotically yet "safely" load all the children in the van, I get to join the long line of cars waiting to get onto the busy streets our children would be forced to walk if they didn't have parents who were willing to face the brutality every day. I'm always at the end of the line. And we wait. A long time. One of the girls in the carpool tells me that she and her friend ran an experiment, which concluded that the kids could walk home faster than they could be picked up and driven home. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's how they calculated their "walking distance".
This same neighbor girl let me in on her Mom's secret. "She just comes really late" she said with a smile, "that way she doesn't have to deal with the long line." The funny thing is, her Mom has gotten my child home earlier than every day I've tried. Sometimes it's 2:40, sometimes 2:45, but never 2:50. And she's doesn't waste all the gas I do, idling in the hot summer heat for 3o min.
Thank goodness for carpooling. I don't think I could handle this 5 days a week..
My biggest complaint is definitely picking up my daughter and the other kids in the carpool twice a week. Today I arrived at the school about 6 minutes before the final bell rang, at approx 2:19. I arrived back at home at 2:50 PM. I live 1.3 miles away. To put in in perspective, it takes me 4 min to drive to school and drop off my child for afternoon kindergarten (which is pleasantly uncrowded at that time of day). It takes me 31 min to do the reverse.
When we bought this house, I saw the shiny elementary school across the street and assumed that my daughter and future children would be attending that school. I checked the school's boundary maps to make sure our house was included, and checked the test scores of this school against several others in the area. Everything checked out, and I felt secure purchasing the house. After we moved in, our neighbors told me they had lost the fight some time ago, and the kids in our neighborhood were being bused to another school because the newer housing somehow won the right to attend that school. Our subdivision had been kicked out. The boundary maps on the school district's web site were apparently out of date, making all of my careful research useless. I took deep breaths and told myself that since my daughter was only 6 months old, plenty of things could change before it was time for her to go to kindergarten.
Flash forward 5 years. They've built another Elementary School, which is closer to the one the kids in the neighborhood had been bused to, but still not as close as the taunting school across the street. This new school is 1.3 miles of walking distance away, however, they calculate distance as if our children fly to school, and that makes our home under 1 mile away. Thus my kindergarten age daughter is within "walking distance" of the school, despite the fact that she would have to cross two very busy and dangerous steets to get there. No matter what label they place on the distance, there is no way on earth my child is walking it, and I've settled for the best solution I can find. Carpooling.
So here's how carpooling works at my school. I'm curious to know if this genius system is implemented everywhere, or if my school has a market on the most frustrating experience in existence. I arrive at the school 6 minutes before the final bell rings. I park two blocks away at the end of the line of cars waiting to pick kids up in the "car pool" lane. There is also a "drive-through" lane, but there is supposed to be no stopping in that lane. I wait for 10 minutes for children to start trickling out of the school. The people who camped out in their cars the night before start picking up their kids at the front of the line. We inch up a few spaces as a couple of cars leave from the front. But then we run into a problem. Some people follow the line of cars to the "pickup area" at the front of the school. But others have their kids just start walking until they see their car. So we've got some people waiting, some people trying to inch up, people leaving the "carpool" lane to jam their way into the "drive-through" lane, and people in the "drive-through" lane trying to jam their way into spaces that are left by deserters in the "carpool" lane. So people like me, whose carpool children have been trained by my other carpool partners to wait by the tree, are left to judge whether cars are going to pull up, or if I have to hop over them to an empty space. Then I have to venture into the "drive-through" lane and hope that someone won't steal the open spot before I get there. I don't want to hop prematurely and lose my place in the line that's not really a line. By the time I jump around all the people whose children have walked to them by this point, and make my way to the pick-up tree place, I'm always one of the last people to be picking up my kids.
To make matters worse, I got a talking to from the aide today for breaking procedure. Apparently, despite the fact that I got out of the car to walk my child from the sidewalk to the driver-side passenger door, children are only allowed to enter the vehicle from the side closest to the sidewalk. In exasperation (more from the whole experience than this one particular annoyance), I voiced my irritation to the aide that I have 6 kids (2 of which are already buckled in car seats in the car) to cram in the back of my mini-van and having them all enter through one door, and forcing half of them to crawl over my buckled children doesn't make life any easier. "It's for her own safety" was her snide reply. Well you know what? If the school were really concerned about my daughter's safety, maybe they could find a nice safe little yellow bus to come pick her up and take her to her house, a very un-safe 1.3 miles of "walking distance" away.
After I chaotically yet "safely" load all the children in the van, I get to join the long line of cars waiting to get onto the busy streets our children would be forced to walk if they didn't have parents who were willing to face the brutality every day. I'm always at the end of the line. And we wait. A long time. One of the girls in the carpool tells me that she and her friend ran an experiment, which concluded that the kids could walk home faster than they could be picked up and driven home. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's how they calculated their "walking distance".
This same neighbor girl let me in on her Mom's secret. "She just comes really late" she said with a smile, "that way she doesn't have to deal with the long line." The funny thing is, her Mom has gotten my child home earlier than every day I've tried. Sometimes it's 2:40, sometimes 2:45, but never 2:50. And she's doesn't waste all the gas I do, idling in the hot summer heat for 3o min.
Thank goodness for carpooling. I don't think I could handle this 5 days a week..
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 11:57 PM.
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That's hysterical! I absolutely loved hearing about your carpool frustrations, and it reminded me of the days my mom used to have to pick me up from my elementary school. I love all of the rules/punishments the school has and particularly enjoyed the aide who reprimanded you. Don't you just love education? Every year I'm in I keep saying it's my last! :)
your school and my kids school is on the same page.... I will not, i refuse to drive my child to school and if i do i park and we walk to the school. Right know we all have to ride bikes until weather is bad...we leave our house in the morning around 8:15 and we make it around 8:35ish and we have to cross a very busy road so i feel you pain.... i hope you school soon finds a better system but in 3 years our school has not and its just worse we went from year around to traditional this year and the first day i thought I'm glad i did't drive it was ZOO.
good luck
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