Balls going over the fence - does it have to be a showstopper?

[menacethedennis]

My DS's primary seems to have a lot of problems with balls going over fences into neighbouring gardens and not being returned, so the extent that the staff limit the number of balls they let the children play with at break times. Some children take in their own balls, but my DS doesn't want to because he says some of those have gone over the fence too (sometimes thrown deliberately by the sounds of it).

How do other schools cope with this? Do they just keep replacing the equipment; maybe increase the height of their fences; send apologetic letters to neighbours requesting that they throw the balls back rather than binning/selling/keeping them?

I guess it depends on the neighbours, and the school's relationship with them.

The village where my kids go to school has an annual 'open gardens' day, and this year the garden of the house next to the school was open. My dd made a beeline for the fence that adjoins the school grounds, and retrieved a large stash of table tennis balls they've seen disappear over there! The woman that owned the house had no idea they were there, and told dd that she and her friends were welcome to come and knock on her door and ask for them in future.

I half wish the school at the end of our road banned balls. If you walk past at playtime you can easily have to return up to 8 balls (yes I do count sometimes because it is ridiculous and that is just in 1 quick walk past on a busy road) and they regularly nearly cause accidents. the other morning walking my kids to school a ball nearly hit a car's windscreen (it was a football sized foam one so no damage) and the woman slammed her breaks on because it had come from behind the car and shocked her, lots of kids walking to school, could easily cause an accident.

sorry that hasn't helped at all but I can quite see why neighbours may not return the balls. I suspect they can't even sit in their gardens at some times of day.

Could the school not raise the fence on that side? or put one of those sloping bits of fence at the top sloping inwards so that balls wouldn't go out?

FootBall goes over 3 times then it goes away.
If the ball goes over the REALLY high fence topped wall into the farm yard its a gonna.
Balls , hoops etc if they go over the low wall onto the lane then year 6 child will be sent to retrieve.

I can see why the school are limiting balls - this must be the child equivalent of parents parking badly in neighbouring streets - how to annoy the householders near the school in one easy step.

Maybe the school could focus on individual children - give them ball licenses like they have pen licenses and they get taken away if they kick / throw a ball over the fence into someone's garden.

I'd also suggest the school go on a charm offensive. If they are tennis balls going over, it's less of an issue, but large heavy footballs going over will damage plants.

Our house backs on to a school and a space hopper came flying over last week!

I just chuck everything back, but I can appreciate that deliberate throwing outside the school boundaries is very irritating for teachers and lunch time assistants and maybe children gradually seeing the ever diminishing lack of equipment is one way to get the message across.

DDs school only allow ball games in a certain bit of the field which is far enough from the fence that no child is likely to get the ball over the fence

The only gardens DS's school can kick the ball into belong to the caretaker or the school gardening club, so the kids just go and get it, the rest is fields so a year 6 child goes and gets it

Sadly the kind of child who enjoys deliberately kicking the ball over the fence , does not care about the kit loss, does not care that other children want to play football, and just wants to annoy .

Sadly the kind of child who enjoys deliberately kicking the ball over the fence , does not care about the kit loss, does not care that other children want to play football, and just wants to annoy .

My school's flat roof accumulates balls like some eco-friendly lagging feature. The site staff go up there every now and then to kick them down.

The school backs onto another school so there is a bit of a trading system.

My DH used to work at an Independent senior that was so keen on football that it replaced it's entire stock of balls every year and I got to scavenge the rejects. Good times!!