When the weather permits, and the boys aren't dragging their feet, we walk my 5-year-old to school. It's not quite a 1/2 mile each way so it would seem like an easy task. Typically before we even get out of sight of the house, my 3-year-old is asking me to carry him. When I refer to him as my husband's "mini-me", I'm not joking. I'm pretty sure if I had the ability to carry my spouse home from the playground, he would ask for it as well. I can't decide if it's a touch of laziness or if he just wants me to hold him [my 3-year-old, not my husband]. Somehow, though we always manage to make it to the school on time. My kindergartner won't let me kiss him anymore, as he has to look cool in front of the other kids, so I have to sneak in my sweet lovin' before we get to the school grounds. He runs off to play before the whistle blows to line up. Now you would think that at this point we could leave, since my doddler typically takes a solid century to walk home. But no, my 3-year-old will not leave the school fence until every single kid is inside. We will watch his brother go in and you would think this was all he was waiting for. Nope. He's like the playground police. Wants to make sure every straggling kid makes it in the door before we head out.
So what is my point? Well, yes I'm a little long-winded about our routine on school days because it occupies a lot of my time and energy 2-3 days a week. What I've noticed on these school days, is that a little bit of poor planning went into the design of the exit strategy for this elementary school. Clearly I've shown that I have plenty of time to analyze the situation while I wait for my youngest to be ready to leave. Alright, the school parking lot is a little ridiculous. It is set up well, in that you pull into the lot, drive down a lane on the right, turn left into the parking area, and when you're ready to leave you continue out the other side of the parking area and continue on out of the school grounds (so you sort of make a circle). This should work well for traffic flow. It gets backed up a little at the entrance as children are crossing the street, so there is an understandable wait while this happens. The real issue is that the lane you enter the school grounds on, also doubles as the exit lane for buses. It's plenty wide for this to be accomplished. Buses are given priority where the lanes comes back together, but some parent's decide that their time is too valuable to sit in the line waiting to get out, so they hop in line with the buses in the hopes of gaining priority as well. This is a huge pet-peeve of mine. The area is clearly labeled showing the appropriate traffic flow, but those who choose to ignore the signs (because the universe revolves around them), throw a wrench into things, slowing down the natural process. It kind of makes me want to grind my teeth, and this is when I'm not even waiting in my car. Apparently this bothers other parents too, as they are so stressed in dealing with this at the end of the school day, that they can't even wait until they get home to light up their cigarette. Classy. I think I'd rather pull my hair out and have a permanent eye twitch than subject my children to the effects of my nasty habit - but that's just me.
In addition to major issues with traffic patterns, there is a small issue (I feel) with the sidewalk. I love love love that the sidewalk is wide enough for approximately 6 kids to walk side-by-side. This works out great when everyone is getting out of school and there is a rush of people all trying to get off the property. When we arrived at our first day of school, one piece of advice provided by a school official was to encourage kids to walk along the fence which would keep them as far as possible from the area where parents are driving out of the parking lot. Of course! This makes perfect sense. Should be easy enough, especially since there's so much room. Now does anybody else see why this might prove a little bit difficult with curious kids? Do we really need a yellow stripe indicating where the edge of the sidewalk is? Somehow we manage to stay off the street when we walk around the neighborhood, and none of our sidewalks have this stripe. Is it to indicate not to park there? A sign might help with that, or perhaps a little common sense. Now maybe some children/parents really need that stripe there to act as a warning, but I can't believe that my preschooler is the only one who thinks it makes a great balance beam.
I love my kindergartner's school. Love his teacher. Especially love that he really likes going and learning new things. But sort of wish that parents would set a better example at least while they're on the school grounds, and that maybe the stripe be scraped off the sidewalk - though I'm sure he would still like to walk on that part just to test fate.
