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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

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 and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they will just find their parent. That's how my kids school works and there is no traffic jam.

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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.

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.

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.

> because the parents were too stupid

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

I’m across the street from a school and there is always one parent that parks in my condo building’s driveway and blocks it. It would be too much for them to be in the line!

Then sometimes, they leave their car and go in the school and we are trying to home or leave and they get angry with us!

Yeah, you can see a lot of creativity depending on what's available. Where I once lived in Houston, parents would park at a nearby strip center and huddle around the school exit. And then walk their kid across the 6-lane road (3 lanes in each direction) that Houston is obsessed with building back to where they parked their car.

This sort of thing drives me insane. The people on the polar extremes are (I suspect) part of why we can't have nice things. I've both lived by the school and been a parent, and I badly wish people would practice some empathy and common sense. For example there are some people that will literally sit outside during pickup hours on a lawn chair and yell at people for parking on the street in front of their house (which, btw, is completely legal and there's nowhere else to park within several miles of the school). I've also seen parents park right in front of driveways, blocking people's access to their homes, which is absolutely not ok. It kills me that we can't just have a simple compromise.

Parents: It's never ok to block somebody's driveway! Residents: It's not illegal for people to park on the street in front of your house (assuming they aren't blocking your access of course)

I live near a school. Soccer practice, parents routinely park up and down the street at the far end of the field where their kids are practicing, because the school car park at the other end of the field would be a good two minute walk away. "No parking this side" doesn't apply to soccer practice parking, either, apparently.

And if you want to just do a drive by pickup, sure, no worries, stop in the middle of the street (with cars either side), and have your kids younger sister hop out, leaving the car door open, and go wander down the slope to help her brother with his equipment and carry it back up the slope. No-one else is using the street or lives there, after all, so they can wait a few minutes. Bonus points if you get belligerent with them or flip them off for being "impatient".

If children can't leave without their parent, then they can't walk home, or bike, or take a bus.

That's a lame take from this. Kids/parents fill out forms that state the typical way the students arrive/depart the school. If they are on a bus route, those kids exit the school from a different exit (side/rear of building) so that the buses queuing up do not interfere with the car queue. Walkers typically exit yet a different set of doors.

The parents that arrive early but have kids that are not ready to be picked up is precisely why the queues get out of control. At least with this method the cars are moved along much faster. If a car arrives in the queue but the kiddo is not yet found, when the car reaches the front it is asked to move to a holding spot out of the queue--much like fast food places do when your order is going to hold up everyone else in line.

If kids have to be released to their parents and are no longer turned out en masse like they used to be, that will absolutely cause traffic and could very well be the root cause of traffic that exceeds the designed capacity of the school pickup circles.

When I was growing up kids within a mile of the school would walk themselves to school and back home with very few exceptions, often starting with first graders. But even a half mile is a long enough distance that many busy parents in the suburbs would choose to drive it rather than walk it four times a day.

That, and just let kids walk home. It's good for their muscles.

Literally addressed in the article.

80% of kids live too far away for walking to be feasible.

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.

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.

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.

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).

lockers are unsafe? wtf terrible school system is this?

One that has to deal with parents either explicitly buying a handgun for their kids or leaving handguns in easily accessible locations.

I played the trombone in sixth grade. Your kid will be fine carrying anything short of a baritone by that age. It sucks to carry. Switch hands as necessary. Be selective with your books on instrument days. But he or she can manage.

Yes, adults walk ~2 miles/hr. 1.5 hours is too long. But there are bicycles which go ~5 times as fast. Now it's a 15-20 minute trip.

Then have them walk a few blocks to where their parent is parked. There's no reason to have a line of cars idling.

Where I live all schools must provide bus service for kids more than 1 mile away, or if the route to school crosses a busy road. Some kids to get a city bus pass, but the yellow school bus is common. I know other states do it differently.

> 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?

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

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.

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.

Do you have any memory of any kids being held in place until someone came to pick them up after 2nd grade?

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?

one abduction and one lawsuit will put an end to release forms real quick

Just like Columbine stopped all future school shootings?

and yet, 40+ years later, we still have them

Would be much more efficient to assign numbers to the child abductors instead, assuming that they are less numerous than the legitimate families.

some (most?) times the abductor is legitimate family

Just give the abductors an NFT that represents the child.

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.

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.

> 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.

> Schools need to dismiss the kid to someone

"Back in my day" the bell went and we walked out the gate and went home.

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.

> 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?

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.

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?

That's fucking ridiculous.

What’s funny is that a lot of modern parents think the latter option is ridiculous.

That has to be out of the norm. I’ve only heard of kindergarteners needing a guardian.

What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them and they were forced to do something asinine like that as CYA.

> 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.

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.

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.

That sounds like the setup for a Simpson's sketch. Apologies for thinking that's hilarious.

Every time it happened, the kids got in the car and just stared at my wife until she called the teacher back.

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.

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…)

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.

> 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.

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.

> it's that this style of violence really is so pervasive

Agree, and it's tragic that this is were we are in the US, and the only concrete action we're willing to take (thoughts and prayers don't count) is to try to mitigate the impact of a shooting rather than preventing it.

So about 12 people were curious but not too surprised when our American friend told us her experience of a school shooting at her university. She was in a different building to the shooter.

The room was shocked into silence when she said "oh, and there was the time at my elementary school..." and had another experience of guns at a school.

We had been surprised by this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/one-in-15-amer...

These numbers don't remotely pass a smell test. The same study claims 2% of Americans have been injured in a mass shooting, and cites 500 mass shootings a year.

2% of 340mm = 6.8mm injured in a mass shooting Conservatively assuming that's equally spread across all ages, and assuming a lifetime of 80 years, implies 6.8mm/80 = 85,000 people injured a year 85,000/500 mass shootings a year = 170 people injured per shooting

This is absurdly high - the Pulse nightclub shooting for instance injured 60 people.

It's obviously harder to analyze the number of people that 'witness' a shooting, but it also seems implausible that an average of ~595 people are witnessing each of these 500 shootings.

The problem here is that self-reported studies like this are incredibly unreliable. Interestingly, the same effect appeared in a pro-gun study, which cited an insane 2+ million defensive gun uses a year.

School shootings became very publicized twenty years before the pandemic, Columbine in 1999. School shooting drills and lockdowns became more common afterwards as few realistic solutions have been passed and nothing has been done to mollify the fears of parents.

School shootings happen at school, not to and from them. (Obviously kids get shot. But mass shootings requires amassing.)

America is the special combo of too much coddling and fuck-em, all at once.

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