Complaining to a school about their students dropping litter in our garden?

[Ivy40]

There are a group of school girls who walk home along our road and drop litter outside our front gate, half of which gets blown into our garden. We live fairly near a newsagent and I think they go there to buy snacks and then throw the wrappers on our road. Elderly neighbour next door is very garden proud and is upset about it too.

I’ve emailed the school (they are in uniform) given them a description of the girls, said which road it is (but not the exact house) and asked them to ask the girls to stop doing this or if they can’t maybe ask the students to be more considerate and not drop litter.

I haven’t had a response yet. DP thinks I’m being harsh, as I said if the school won’t do anything I’ll contact the council.

I was working in the garden when a couple of lads on their way home from school asked if they could put their litter in my bin, told them anytime, I'd rather that than chucked on the floor.

Definitely email the school again. I absolutely cannot bare littering.
Drives me completely mad. I live in a really lovely area. I am that woman who collects the random litter that lands, is thrown, on my road near my home. Just can't bare it.

@billy1966

I am turning in to that lady too. I’m sweeping the road outside my house, as well as my next door neighbours drive - she’s elderly and she’s getting stressed about it.

@LadyRannaldini

That’s very polite of them. Nice to hear.

Ivy40, I take your point, and it did cross my mind at the time that I might have got a bad reaction, but teacher instinct kicked in, and I admit I held my breath.
In an odd way, I think basically decent lads had not stopped to think that actual real people were involved, and that I saw them as human beings as well.
I guess I was also emboldened by the fact the nearby school had done a big PR outreach as they wanted to improve their image.
Staff are around the school gates at the end of the day; I'm two streets away, so I guess I'm in the "Now we can relax" zone.
But you're right; it would have served me right if I'd got kickback, and you know your local school better than I do.

I emailed a school on Saturday and got a reply today. It was a compliment rather than a complaint, but I was pleased they bothered to respond. I would expect them to respond to a complaint more quickly.

I did once email a school to tell them that graffiti in the local park was slagging them off. (I don't blame them, but thought they might want to know as reputation was important to them.) They couldn't give less of a shit and were very rude in their response ("not our problem, tell the council"). I fired one back to tell them I had already done so and just thought they might want to know about damaging remarks and penises scrawled all over children's play equipment, purporting to be written by their students. Guess not.

@honeysucklejasmine

I guess it depends on the school. I’ll keep you all posted!

Good luck! We have a similar issue as we live on a corner of a cul de sac. It’s not litter though it’s the kids hiding in the cul de sac to smoke and dropping their fag butts on the pavement, half of which end up in our drive way. Keep meaning to let the school know.

I’ve had an email back from the school - they’re going to mention it as part of citizenship when they’re all back in September. Gives me time to get my CCTV fixed over the summer too, just in case.

Kenny - defo drop the school an email, it won’t hurt.

Can you contact the litter wardens with the time the girls are usually there so they can catch them? And it certainly is a school issue as they’re in uniform, I work in a school and I’ve had to deal with a situation like this before when cctv was sent to us, I’d advise against talking to the girls directly though as they can argue harassment/threats by you and it’s just not worth it

In my experience as a stroppy middle aged biddy, 9 times out of ten when you tell off a group of enormous badly behaved teenagers they instantly go into cowering “sorry miss, won’t do it again miss” mode, or are just nice, friendly and apologetic. The tenth time they’ll normally just slink off sulkily. However, I can’t really blame you for worrying about the one in a hundred times that it goes really badly.

I rang the upper school down the road for the same reason, we live just up from a Tesco Express and a newsagents so the rubbish was getting ridiculous. The school was fine and said it would be mentioned in assembly. It stopped and hasn’t happened since, this was about two years ago now. Hope you have the same success OP.

I had to do this at our old house, the school bus (high school) would stop outside our house and they'd all pile off and chuck their rubbish over my fence.

I tried asking nicely, I tried telling them straight.

The threat of the bus being cancelled if I had to contact the school again did it!

Good luck with that one OP. I spoke nicely to a girl on the bus who was eating bits of take away chicken and dropping the bones on the floor, I asked her not to and she said "Why?" !!!!!

I emailed the school as I recognised the uniform, the bus route is not in the local school catchment and I described the girl , her bag and her friend and expressed my sadness that they were bringing the school into disrepute. Ok I was a tad passive aggressive. The deputy mailed back and said they did a lot of input about caring for the environment and that the school did regular litter picks in the school grounds.

I lost the passive bit for my next email and said picking up their own rubbish in their own school was not actually caring for the environment because if they had taken in the lessons they wouldn't be littering their own school in the first place. And could they kindly increase their care for the environment to include not throwing chicken bones on the floor of a bus which is not only disgusting but a health and safety trip hazard.

She never got back to me.

Yes, let the school know.

The secondary near me sends the pupils out litter picking every so often. They asked for a description when I told them about litter being dropped my pupils.

Most schools would respond positively to this.