AIBU to continue turning in the school gate?

[NortonBuns]

I drive my dd to school everyday and once I drop her off I turn around and drive home. I approach the back gate of the school and use this entrance to turn my car round so I can head back home.
The school have now put up a sign saying keep our children safe, no stopping, dropping off or turning in the entrance.
So where am I supposed to turn around? If I carry on I reach the front gate which is busier and has the busses. If I turn before I reach the back entrance I am doing a three point turn in busy school run traffic with lots of children walking and cycling.
So AIBU to say I am safest turning in the large double gate and ignoring the new sign?

If you’re 6 miles from school then your child would be entitled to school transport; a taxi or a bus. So she should be in that, car pooling, instead of you driving her, adding to the congestion and causing a hazard at the school.

How about a helicopter? Could just parachute DD in at drop off and winch her back up at pick up.

@LadyBracknellsHandbagg well none of the solutions people have come up with are safer.
Then end of the 2 miles away road is a very busy crossroad where it would not be safe to stop.
I can’t carry on to do a loop as I would then hit the full front of school traffic and children walking and cycling to school.
This is a high school by the way and we live very rurally so I am not unusual for having to drive.
There is literally a long queue of other parents waiting to turn at this point. The children have a fenced off walk way which leads to a zebra crossing so are not in danger.

In the 14 years that my daughter was at school, I drove her, for various reasons, for 10 of those years. During that time, at three different schools, there was never a single occasion when I needed to stop on the zig zags, across the gate, or turn into a school entrance, despite living in a busy suburb of south London with fairly heavy traffic and little on street parking close to the schools. I always made sure that we arrived early enough to find a legal parking space, sometimes several minutes walk from the school, and when I had dropped my daughter off or picked her up, we drove round whatever route was necessary to get back home without turning in anyone’s drive, let alone the school.

The only time I have ever blocked a a school’s zig zags or entrance was when I was part of a group of parents who put out traffic cones every morning and afternoon at my daughter’s first school to stop lazy ignorant parents like you from endangering the other children by stopping and manoeuvring where they shouldn’t. The fact that other parents do this is irrelevant and doesn’t give you the right to do the same.

Yes, you are so obviously unreasonable. Firstly, I don’t know why you should be allowed but no other parent would be. Schools are also private property so they can tell you whether you can stop there.

Not even two years ago, a car ploughed through a school entrance and killed two children. Schools trying to mitigate it and you think you’re above the rules. Drop your child off elsewhere, make them walk, make them get the bus. Figure it out.

Why isn't your local council providing school transport? Even if you live "very rurally" school transport is provided if you live more than 3 miles away.

Why can't your DC use that?

School have been very clear they want people to stop this. It isn’t safe for the children.

It’s up to you to now find a safer alternative. Can you pull up further away and your children walk in?

I think we need a diagram, or even better a screenshot on Google maps.

I’ve never seen a school located as you describe. It sounds like Los Angeles. Are you in the UK?

There must be roads off of this very long straight road. DS gets driven and we drop him off on a side street and he walks the last bit (as so many others)

Hint op:

You do not have to drive. Somewhere in your scenario are choices you have made which are resulting in you driving.

Eg

• you are entitled to school transport to your nearest school if over 3 miles away

So either you have chosen a school too far from home (your problem) or chosen a private school (also your problem).

You may now have to make different arrangements that are less convenient for you or your DC. No, the rules can't be bent to accommodate your sense of entitlement.

A map / diagram would help. Are you saying there is no where to turn around for 2 miles past the school?

Walk to school?

Drop off at nearest bus stop to you.

Then end of the 2 miles away road is a very busy crossroad where it would not be safe to stop.

You can drop her off outside school though can't you? (or just up the road slightly) you just can't turn around there? So you could proceed to the crossroad and make your way home from there?

I can’t carry on to do a loop as I would then hit the full front of school traffic and children walking and cycling to school.

This seems more like you 'won't' rather than you 'can't'?

Oh wow. You're serious! I've heard it all now.

I would ask the school what their solution is as opposed to Mumsnet!

I live in a situation where parents do need to drive their older children and drop them off. We are semi-rural and there is no other transit. The school worked with the police to decide on a car travel route near the school and a drop off point.

We all had to use it even if it wasn’t the most convenient. it was great though because the children were safe at drop off and it ran very efficiently. It also minimized interference with non-school traffic. I learned to approach the school from a slightly different direction that wasn’t the shortest, but made it easier for me to get into the queue of parents dropping off their young secondary students.

any chance of the school and the community working together to come up with a better system?

Diagram needed. I'm just imagining this one, solitary 2 mile long road, with absolutely no other roads coming off it and a school sitting at the end of it. I've never seen anything like that in real life.

when my children were little, I often used to wonder if some parents found it a shock to discover (on parents evening and at school summer fetes etc) that there were in fact other children at their kid's school. Imagine the horror of discovering your kid is in a class with 30-odd other kids!

How old is your DC @NortonBuns ? Apols if I have missed this info. Can they not walk the two miles from the top of the road?

I have a bit of sympathy with OP. Our secondary school has a drop off point for parents because there's no parking nearby. It's easy and it works.

The primary we use has enough parking close by which is safe, but they keep threatening to close off the entrance to the estate where everyone parks, apparently as a safety measure. That just pushes the traffic up to the busy main road where people will end up parking both sides making that road a single lane through. Whenever that road is blocked there is gridlock as it's the main route to two of the town's three high schools.

Before everyone says walk, it's a Welsh medium school with a massive catchment area, loads of parents need to drop off on the way to work.

Here is an idea. Maybe you should walk or move to a closer school?

Yes, continue to do it. Be that parent who thinks the whole world revolves around them and that rules/reasonable requests don't apply to them. 🙄

Might it not be an idea to look for a solution which avoids you being part of the queue?

I cannot believe there is nowhere a short/longer distance from
the school where you can safely park, drop and turn.

I live near a secondary school and it astounds me if ever I am about at 2.45pm how many parents have 30 mins to spare to sit in their cars on the absolute nearest road, parked illegally on the pavement, bc their 11yo+ DC cannot walk for 5-10 mins. There are many safer places they could park.

It's banned at my daughter's school as it's unsafe. Yabvvvvvvvu and I can't believe it. A child was knocked down a year ago due to a nasty human like you. Please don't do it. How you feel if you hurt a child. The signs there very a reason. Sorry so angry as I and tbh my daughter and all the other children and parents saw the accident and that poor mum and boy. He is ok and back at school two days later but I never forget the screams.