School Parking

[ChatTime]

At my childs school some staff park cars in the school playground this has been given the go ahead by the current head. I have voiced my concern with regard to health & saftey also to the fact that due to major building working going on at school the closure of one entire playground means lack of play space. I had no responce however today i happened to see the Head at school gates and mentioned my concern and that other parents were in agreement with me. Heads responce was she had made the decision that cars can be parked no change will happen and if i didn't like it to take my child to another school. Where do we as parents stand, after all we as Tax Payers pay for the children to play in the playground and not for staff to have their private car park.

Nobody is saying you're being unreasonable to want the playground to be used for play, but you need to be sure that you have all the facts as to why the playground is being used for parking.

As I posted earlier, perhaps it's impossible to monitor three playgrounds at once so there's a safeguarding issue. Maybe it isn't sufficiently secure.

Calm down.

I think you need to get a life, frankly. And let the Head Teacher get on with her job of running her school according to her professional capabilities. I doubt she needs your help.

The 3rd playground is currently being used to store building supplies and will reopen once work completed Head has said will always let staff park in playground. To point out there is slight slope what if a car rolls back we have 4 year olds playing less than a foot away from cars with only cones around cars

Right, so the DCs are allowed to play in the playground 9clearly not now, but when the building work is finished), but they do so alongside parked cars.

I wouldn't be too thrilled with this tbh.

'Slight slope' - do the teachers at the school not use their brakes, then?

I swear it's stupid season on here this afternoon - between this and the pregnant teacher... I'm going to start a thread about how unreasonable it is for pregnant teachers to park cars on school playgrounds and jobshare a sex life in a minute.

emptyshell.

Sex? What's that? No time for us teachers to do that anymore. Too busy humping books back and forth from school.

Stop that humping - it may result in maternity leave!

joking aside about 3 years ago an ambulance was taken to a playgroup for the children to have a look around. This was somthing that was done many times, however on this occasion the ambulance rolled back. One child lost their life. There were adults present but were not able to stop the tragedy. The handbrake had been pulled my child was at this playgroup at the time. We entrust out children into the care of the school having cars parked in an area meant to be a playground to make it easier for staff and for no other reason how can that be ok

Please speak to the governors then - cars and children are not a good mix.

Ok, so I can understand there being a particular concern about safety then - shame you waited quite so long into the thread before you included that part.

As a primary teacher who had to park outside during building work I understand the head.

Our cars ARE targets when on the road, I'd say on average one break in a week. My windows were smashed once, one unlucky guy 3 times in 2 months. They'd pull down back seats to check the boot, force glove boxes etc. We were clearly watched as nothing was left on display.

Also there were a few keying incidents.

The governors will have debated the issue and come to an agreement.

Teachers park in my dc's school playground, it has a section marked by bollards. No-one complains. I park in the playground too, when I drop off my dd2 in her wheelchair - are you going to complain about that too?

Bringing the Ambulance incident into this is regrettable - that was an extremely unusual and sad incident, but could have happened at any Ambulance open day or show.

Chattime - obviosuly that is an appalling tragedy but honestly you can't use one incident of such a rare nature to argue the case of the OP. If you look hard enough you will find one instance of almost every possible and impossible scenario really happening and we would have to stop life as we know it if we used them as precedents to stop common sense measures being implemented where necessary.

I generally have to do at least two trips from the car to my clasroom.

ChatTime - I'm assuming you'd rather have a teacher with well-prepared resources/books marked/planning+APP done and in the class than the playground back? Children spend more time in the classroom than the playground. The third playground will be open when the building work is done. This time of the year there will be lots of wet playtimes too (assuming your weather is similar to mine).

Also, I've known three teachers since September have their tyres slashed. These are are three seperate schools, one in Plymouth, one in Bodmin and one in Birmingham.

sorry, just realised you are the OP! My point stands though.

This is becoming AIBU by stealth. Your OP didn't mention anything like this.

If it is to be an ongoing situation with children and cars playing together permanently, take it up with the governors. Safeguarding/health and safety are very big issues for Ofsted. They (the governors) will take you seriously.

Op i actually think yanbu, its a playground not a car park.

maybe the teachers should car share, use a bus or walk, just like they ask the pupils to do. it is dangerous to have them in the playground. you do need to speak to someone maybe the education dept at the local council could help, especially with the response of the head, she should never have said that.

good luck

Did the head really say tough. If you don't like it, move your child to another school?

If so, then that is not a good head.

A good head would have been more tactful! Said that she understood the inconvenience, it was a temporary measure, x,y,z was in place to ensure the children had a safe place to play and things would be back to normal in however many weeks.

To say, basically, fuck off.. well, that's really not a good way to handle the situation!

I've known a school where I roll up on supply and get asked if I want my car locked IN the playground for the day with the comment, "we haven't had any vandalized in a couple of weeks in the carpark but you might want to get locked in to be sure".

I was actually RARE among the teachers I worked with that I didn't lug piles of books home to mark - because I know that they just sit there all weekend making me feel guilty and I put off doing them so I prioritised getting them done at school. Most I worked with had at least one stacker box going home on an evening, whereas I'd rather do the faffing about on the computer part at home and the marking at school. Even so - I still invariably had a wheelie trolley full of things I WAS working on at home most days.

I thought the playground was closed off though - so in effect no more dangerous than a carpark.

meltedmarsbar i have no issues if an individual needs to b parked near an entrance if they need. my issue is when it is done to make it easier for an individual because they can't be bothered to make an effort and who cares about anyone else. This seems to b the culture at school staff have done it for some time now and we don't care is the responce parents are getting. at least ur school has an area sectioned of there is nothing of the kind here just park where u want as many cars as you want. Last week i counted 11 cars which was space taken from our children

The teachers r paring in one of the two playgrounds used for play not the one that is of limits

ChatTime. The words you are trying to use are 'response', 'be', 'your', 'you' and 'off'.