I live with my DP and we have 2 DC each.
I’ve done my years of school runs for my own kids and they make their own way around now.
DP has his kids most of the school week and does his own school runs (or his parents do pick ups) so I’m not involved. I only have to do one evening pick up from a club once a week as it clashes with another club.
We both work full time so the SDC are either with grandparents or their mum on her days.
DP is looking at secondary schools in our catchment area and there is one very close, walking distance he isn’t keen on as not doing so well and doesn’t have full staff of teachers.
He likes the school further away that is in a traffic nightmare hot spot. I pointed out the traffic is notoriously awful in this location, which is in the opposite direction to his job, grandparents house and and asked what he was planning on doing to get the child back and forth. He said ‘the school bus’ and we looked it up and he’s seen it’s £100 a month which he is balking at, and now I feel under pressure to help with the school run. I suggested also looking at other closer schools but they have really fallen in love with this one (it’s in our catchment area).
It technically is on my way to work but I always avoid this area due to how bad the traffic is so I would have to purposely go there every day adding time to my journey.
I am in a senior management role and have different start times any time from 8am to 9am depending on what’s planned for my day or unexpected issue that can crop up I need to get into work ASAP, or end up on an early call logging on from home to sort out an issue. I can end up working late some evenings without notice, which allows me to be flexible with my start time, which sometimes I use as an opportunity to go to the gym in the mornings. I would entirely lose this freedom most of the week. As an aside, my employer doesn’t mind my flexible working approach, in fact it’s a perk of my job and trust based as I do not get paid any overtime or TOIL as part of my contract.
£100 is a lot to pay out a month so I see why he’s asking me to drop one of the DC off as this would save us money but he doesn’t HAVE to choose this school, and if he does I feel like that’s a him problem not my problem.
Am I being mean to my DP to expect him to sort this out? I don’t want to commit to 5 years of school runs I already did a decade of them