AIBU - to expect parents to park safely when picking up their kids?

[sparkybabe]

Outside our local school there are the usual yellow zig-zags and opposite there are double yellow lines. Since the start of the new term there have been about 4 cars persistantly parking all over theese to pick their kids up. One of the mums takes their registrations, and passes them onto the police (who do nothing) but today one guy saw her taking his number and leaned out of the car to yell 'wot you doing'. when we said he is parked illegally and endangering the kids who cross the road, he said 'oh i'm only picking up my little kid' (we, OTOH are having a coffee morning?) and we had a bit of a slanging match. He didn't move tho. We asked the headteacher to come out (he's a big lad) but he turned up about 15 minutes later, when all the cars were gone. What can we do?

We have a similar problem at our primary school. It is part of the head teacher's job to be involved with this problem and you could put pressure on him to

1 mention it in the newsletter
2 go out there and help police it himself
3 ask the police send in the yellow peril
4 put notices up.

If head teacher still drags his feet, ask him how he will feel and what he will look like when the first accident occurs and a child is injured or worse.

In my dc's previous school, they did get Plod in once to put parking tickets on people's windscreens and it caused great sound and fury from the lazy motorists, but the rest of us had a good laugh and the car problem abated .... for a while.

I had the same problem at my ds' nursery in the uk. We lived across the street from a private school for japanese students. They had a system of drop off where the parents would pull up in front of the school and the kids would jump out and walk inside the school gates. The whole process was monitored by volunteer parents and overseen by one school employee. We lived directly across the street and not once was there a traffic jam, problems with people parking in front of our drive, or dangerous driving. I suggested to the head at ds' nursery that they might want to try the same thing as it seemed very effective and safe. She said "oh that would never work with us!." I assumed she meant a state school (or maybe she meant non-japanese). Anyway, the next year we moved back to the usa and my ds started at teh local state school. And lo and behold, they have the same system. It works smoothly, efficiently and safely. Perhaps an effort might be tried to organize something of the sort at your school instead of spending time collecting number plates which doesnt' seem to be working. (I had tried similar campaigns at ds' nursery, including daily phone calls to local police station, local mp, local councillors, local newspaper, and a whole slew of other people who were completely disinterested in the problem...despite the school being located on a busy narrow street where one child had already been killed.)

actually sofia at Drop-off time in the morning thee is no problem, I suppose because these kids are between 7 and 11. The cars just pull up and the kids jump out and off the cars go. I even do that myself sometimes if i'm off to feed the global monster - sorry, tescos.