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.
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
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)
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.
>Just letting the kids out en mass is how my son's school worked until Covid.
My kids school worked like that and it was still a mess, primarily because the parents were too stupid to follow the rules as to how to park their cars. I was set up so that everyone parked in parallel rows ||||| but the ones on the right were closest to the exit, so a bunch of people would pull into those rows to the point that they'd wrap around behind the other rows ___| and prevent people from getting into those rows. It was stupid and the school would send out notices and have employees walk down to the end of the row and tell people to move to the next one but it never stayed fixed.
This sums up all of the school pickup problems I see and/or deal with daily.
I also see many parents making dangerous decisions, most of which fit into the “I’ll go now” category, including accelerating quickly to get to the crosswalk before the kids crossing the street do. Just this school year, I’ve seen multiple near misses, with kids jumping back onto the sidewalk to avoid being hit by a parent who just picked up their own kid.
