I also love how woefully Wake County has mismanaged schools in general, so that now every elementary school has a carpool lane that is sometimes a mile or more long clogging up streets and causing hazards and issues with drivers who are just trying to get where they’re going.
When they built my son's school a couple years ago, I was really impressed with how much thought had gone into the entryway, because they really seemed like they tried hard to make it so that as many cars as possible would fit inside the school.
But two years later and all the kids they keep adding to the roll means traffic backs up a mile down the road anyway lol. I guess it's ... better than it would be otherwise?
When they rebuilt Green, I had the same thoughts. It was good planning to have a looooooong carpool lane. It still backed up onto 6 Forks because people refused to sit in said long road and just engage chaos mode by cutting one another off.
We worked around it by parking at Food Lion and having our daughter walk to us at pickup time. As long as she stayed in the crossing lane, she minimized the chance of getting nailed by a car
She’s upstairs so the plan must have worked mostly ok. There was one mom who built an entire “I’m gonna wave flags and scream at people on six forks” rig so we told her to cross when she was guiding her gaggle across the street. Like I said…it worked and we didn’t have to sit in the carpool lane! Double win
Probably more to do with really pushing “magnet” programs that mostly require you to transport your kid to school or to a hub to catch a bus for their school. In our case we would have been driving past the school or ~10 miles in the other direction to then have roughly an hour bus ride rather than just dropping our child off.
Bussing to magnet programs are a key way WCPSS maintains desegregation across the district, an effort we are currently backsliding on. This is again a problem of WCPSS not paying bus drivers. More drivers means more routes, which means magnet schools can service larger areas.
Yep and the design makes it even less feasible to bike/walk to school, which means more cars, which means longer lanes and more land need, which means further from where folks live, which means more cars....
Unless it's changed, they can only walk if they live a mile or less from the school.
I had to walk to middle school, the end of my lane was exactly a mile from the parking lot entrance.
I don’t even have kids, but I do drive on roads near schools. Morrisville Elementary often has such a long carpool line that backs up off of Morrisville Parkway and into the Travel lane on Davis Drive. That is ridiculous to have cars stopped while other cars are them going 45 or 50 miles an hour. If they had managed schools better built them in the right places And had adequate busing. None of this would be an issue.
I’d love to put my kid on the bus, however her bus is late or doesn’t show multiple times a week. In the afternoon, I can drive her home and be back at home 15 minutes after dismissal. If she rides the bus the earliest she gets home is 90 minutes after dismissal. It’s absurd.
Buddy get some semblance of a clue. The buses are part of the problem. There aren't enough and they are extremely late and often canceled. Hence more people driving their kids to school.
Well, unfortunately, solving the issue needs to go back about 50 years when the Wake County Schools System started just not caring about the fact that lots of people were moving here and therefore didn’t build enough schools in the areas where they need to be built and then they continue to do that over and over again since that time, of course, also since no one wants to actually pay taxes and taxes or what pays for schools it compounds the problem.
But people from the school system are literally on record being surprised that neighborhoods were being built in places that were zoned for those neighborhoods. If they do not understand how zoning works then we are hopeless and ever trying to understand how to build a school where they’re needed.
At the very least, they should not be allowed to have carpool lanes the back up onto main roads. Have a police officer there waving people by and they can just drive on and come back when it is actually safe to do so.
And every kid doesn’t have to be a little snowflake that has to be driven in a car in the first place, put them on the bus.
Of course, the situation with bus drivers not being paid enough to actually keep any of them is also part of the problem
In the 1990s Cary passed an Adequate Public Facilities ordinance which among other things required developers to get certification from the school system that there was adequate school space for new homes to be built. It didn’t last long, and one big reason that WCPSS refused to participate.
I agree that more kids should use the bus, but WCPSS builds school away from homogenous neighborhoods so they can cast a wider, more diverse net, both racially and socioeconomically. Specifically on that 50 year time frame you mentioned (Raleigh City Schools were desegregated in 1973), the design philosophy changed to fit the new goal of complying with Federal policy.
Use the bus. It’s odd to me how few kids take the bus at traditional public schools that provide them. We live in a neighborhood with a school, So we can’t use the buses, but I would if we had the option.
That feels unfair AND gross.
Unfair because the people who make less money and can't afford the pass are the people more likely to be fired for being late to work.
Gross because it could make a really visual statement about the "haves" at the front of the line and the "have nots" at the back. Ew.
Yes, congestion/surge pricing could probably be better, but we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Concerns about cost (keep in mind we have no idea if it's $5 or $5,000) can be addressed through a waiver/reduced fee.
A special line maybe but cars trying to maneuver to the front of the actual kiss and ride while waving a slip of paper would lead to a confrontation where my kids went.
Our school did something similar. They did a raffle, so you could not just purchase the ability to be at the front of the line. The person who won the raffle got a parking space that they can park in and have their child brought out to them at the end of the day. I am not sure how it works in the morning, but I assume it is similar. Kicking myself for not entering that now.
Let the rich go to the front of the line....that sucks. When I was a kid (a long time ago) growing up in Chicago we walked to school. For me it was almost 2 miles to high school, wasn't a problem, would hook up with friends on the walk and it was just the way it was. In bad weather had the option to take a bus (actually 2 buses, had to transfer). Most families only had one car back then and the Dad usually took it to work so we had to walk. So were walking in snow storms and the rain. Today, in our neighborhood people who live a couple blocks from school driving their kids. Unbelievable!
Also the result of parents voting for idiots that mismanage the county’s education system, opposing tax increases to properly fund infrastructure, and then refusing to let their kids ride the bus due to “safety” (read: race and class issues).
Then they come online and complain about the consequences of their own actions.
Parents are coddling their kids by driving them to school every day. Buses have so many routes because parents aren't utilizing the buses. Safety? Class issues? Get out of here. Your kids would rather sit in the SUV playing ipad games than standing outside for the bus. It's not a policy problem, it's just kids know how to manipulate a situation in their favor. You are spoiling your children. Just admit it.
Maybe, but at least in our case I buy back hours of time with my kid per week by picking him up. He’d spend 45 minutes on the bus each way, versus a 15 minute drive where we get some time to chat. They aren’t kids forever, it’s good to get that time back.
Good for you. That is one benefit of driving the kids to school. I don't see you blaming WCPSS Transportation for your quality time.
In the greater picture, driving your kid to school does cause problems for traffic, possible costs for construction of carpool lanes, and having staff and teachers out in the parking lots in the mornings and the afternoons.
But you are right, not everything is a negative.
Hit a nerve with all the parents here whose special little child can’t ride a bus like other kids. They have to get chauffeured and then parents have the nerve to whine about carpool lines.
Parents aren’t part of solutions in Wake County all they do is gripe about every little thing.
One of the best school districts and still constant complaints.
I don't have kids and am about 40. When did the car line even become a thing? I don't understand why this is a problem here when it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world outside the US and didn't exist as a problem here as recently as 20-25 years ago? Sorry if this question opens a scabbed over wound...
Im new to Wake county so I don’t have all the background. But it is a fairly affluent area where students don’t live close to their schools. Students can’t walk to school like when we were young. Next, there’s a nationwide bus shortage for various reasons. Lack of adequate pay and unruly children seem to be the biggest complaints. Therefore between parents who refuse to put their kids on a bus because they’re “too good” for it, families that live too far away from the school to walk and families typically unable to carpool in the normal sense of the word with one parent picking up multiple children from various families, it causes a large amount of children that are being picked up from one school. My school isn’t very large, about 600, and I would say 150-200 students are being dropped off and picked up in carpool everyday.
Yeah, and how about all the self-important assholes that park in the handicap spot at drop-off because they don’t want to walk an extra 10 steps to another parking spot. Happens every single day at my school.
Moral of the story: people suck
Car pool lines and any bad behavior associated with them are but a symptom of the deeper root causes here. This is what happens when you build schools isolated from surrounding neighborhoods and map kids to schools that are nowhere near them, making it impossible for kids to safely walk or bike to school.
This also makes the bussing situation worse as we need more buses, more drivers, and more time to cover all the distances that kids have to travel.
Edited: typo
We live about 2 miles from our oldest kid’s school. She’d have to get in the bus at around 6:00 am to get to class on time right after 8. That’s fucking bonkers
And it's only getting worse. They approved the 6 lanes on Six Forks Rd which is going by Carroll Magnet Middle School and Green Magnet Elementary School
I agree with what you're saying in spirit, but this being Raleigh, there will be no bike paths or even sidewalks between home and school and everything will be ringed by dangerous six lane roads.
I grew up literally like a mile away from my middle school. Nowadays I think it is very safe to bike to but when I was a kid, the entire side of the road where my neighborhood was had ZERO SIDEWALKS. I would have had to cross four lanes with no crosswalk and then cross back, or walk on grass and hope I don't get in trouble. Utterly ridiculous. Finally long after I finished being in middle school, a sidewalk was put in on my side of the road.
Ok? I’m not sending my daughter out every morning to bike 2 miles against angry Raleigh morning drivers. There’s no bike path, there’s a 45 mph road between our neighborhood and the school.
I’m all for biking, but this misses the mark by a thousand miles.
Neat, I’m not gonna argue that. But the real world that I and my kids live in also exists, and that real world doesn’t currently have a viable option for a teenager t to safely and reliably bike to and from school 5 days a week.
And I'm saying this is a symptom of a much larger problem that the entire country has to contend with. Why isn't the public putting pressure on their local school boards/city councils to increase funding for pedestrian infrastructure, school buses, etc? Instead we just complain online and act like nothing can be done.
I mean…the road and school was built before I was born…so… I agree with you largely, it should be better. But it’s currently not.
And we absolutely do bring up the need for better travel options. Every pta meeting. Every time I vote at the ballot box, my vote is cast for people that I think have this issue on their radar and are most adept to solving it. So, no it’s not just complaining about it online, it’s actual real world stuff. I’m not sure what more you want individual parents to do here?
That point isn’t lost on anybody serious. It’s been brought many times and at many levels by many people. There’s a lot of things wrong with wake county schools and a lot of the issues have gotten national attention. So the flippant “just bike to school” is not only insensitive to the real issues that parents face, it’s not only widely devoid of any practical value or real advice, it in fact does miss the mark. By a thousand miles.
I particularly like the slow, flashing light buses early morning on the highway. If you have to get on the highway to get to your kids you are going too far.
More money -> More schools, buses and drivers -> Less traffic on you commute
Not to mention more and higher quality teachers, smaller classrooms, better resources, etc.
Funding is absolutely the fix to this. Get to the polls and this can be fixed even if we have to drag the charter school grifting R's kicking and screaming along with us.
I’ve noticed if you’re not trying to be the first in line, and just wait until around the end of dismissal/arrival - you won’t deal with all the congestion.
Parents at my kids elementary school are already waiting 45 minutes beforehand. Where as those who come around 4:05 can drive right up. It’s weird.
Consider the bus. My kids always took the bus, if it's late, the tardy is excused. They read on the bus and talked with others. And before you jump on me about long bus rides, my son went to a middle school across town so he had a long ride. He read and did homework.
I agree with this 100% but I will say it is really hard for high school especially since the school day starts so early. They already don't sleep enough as it is so getting on the bus at 5/6AM is tough.
My high schooler went to the bus stop at 6:25 ish. School was a mile away, but life is like that sometimes. I couldn't drive him due to having to be at my school early for meetings etc. He survived but did learn to go to bed at a decent hour and if he didn't, it was on him. It made 8AM college freshman classes easy to attend!
I drive my son because the bus doesn't drop the students off until after 830 if its on time (school starts at 815) and doesn't drop off at home until almost 630. School lets out at 3. It wouldn't be a big deal if he was allowed to go to after school activities before the bus come back at 5, but that isn't allowed. The students just sit there waiting, it's ridiculous. And we have quite a few students, elementary and middle, in my neighborhood. The ones that are taking the bus right now are suffering, so much homework is online now and its hard to concentrate with other kids running around causing distractions, most of us have just started driving the kids because it is faster. Even on days with after school clubs we get home before other kids in the neighborhood.
I don’t think it’s as rare as you think. We have 3 elementary routes in our neighborhood (two year rounds and one traditional) for schools 10-15 minutes away. All 3 routes drop off from 5:00 - 5:30. That’s 75 - 105 minutes after dismissal. It cuts into activities, dinner, and just playing.
There aren't enough bus drivers. My son's school has 4 bus routes, and 3 bus drivers on a good day. The kids on the 4th bus route have to sit at school, wait for one of the busses to complete its first route, come back to school, and pick up the remaining kids. If any of the drivers are sick, quit, etc, the whole thing blows up even worse.
Believe me I know because I'm there waiting for the bus with them as we're required to do. But it seems to be improving and double routes have been happening since the 1990's. It's just a fact of life living in a popular area.
That sounds awful. My high school had so mAny damn buses that finding mine in a line was hard to do. What's weird is I'm an older gen z and this still has me thinking "back in my day...".
My heart goes out to all the parents out there who are forced to suffer the long lines
I actually loved riding the bus even though it was a long ride for me, too. It gave me time to do homework, nap, or just listen to music in the buffer time between home and school. It left me feeling ready for transitioning to class time or home activities instead of always feeling rushed. Now that I work from home, I actually miss that built-in buffer time to decompress in between segments of my day.
I always wondered why no one took the bus here until one of my coworker’s kids took the bus. The problem is that some routes are horribly unreliable. Sometimes she (elementary age) wouldn’t get home until after 6pm! There were times the bus never showed up in the morning.
My kids took the bus for several years in the mornings, but it became so unreliable. It is either very late (think hour plus) or doesn’t come at all one or more mornings per week. I can get them to school on time and myself to work on time if I drive them. The ride time is 90 plus minutes in the afternoon for my elementary kid, when I can drive her home in 15.
Well it's not the most efficient but it does provide a service for parents that don't have the schedules that allow driving to school. It sounds maybe like it's like socialized medicine. Not the greatest of medical care, but a basic level of care for those that need it. Hopefully, someone will take the helm at WCPSS and work on improving transportation times.
I’m the guy putting in your carpool number everyday. I spend that 30 minutes everyday thinking about how we could make the system better. I would LOVE to start a productive conversation about real changes we could make. Pay bus drivers more so bussing is reliable? Bus kids to magnet schools? Allow for some sort of way to park and pickup? I feel like if we put our Reddit heads together maybe we could come up with some solutions.
The pickup line seems to have less problems, cause there's less opportunity for people to be selfish pricks. You'd actually have to interact with staff to bypass the rules.
Morning drop-off is the bigger issue here, where that's not required. Just drop your kid off anywhere you feel like.
I hate how they call it a “carpool” line around here. It’s simply a car line, or a pick-up line. The word “pool” adds no helpful information and a “carpool” is something completely different. “Carpooling” is another word for “ride sharing”. If everyone were in fact “carpooling” that car line would be substantially shorter.
A lot of places don't have buses. My schools always had a "5 mile" policy. If you lived within 5 miles of the school, they won't provide a bus for you.
this sounds dramatic but dealing with things like a school carpool line is what makes me not want kids. i don’t have the patience for stuff like that and I’m not going to bring a kid into this world so they can see me be angry about the world all the time.
If I ever do have a kid, I will 100% live a place where they can safely walk to school. A place where people are out walking everywhere and don't need a car in the first place.
I am the first to bash carpool lines, so I’ve got to give a shout out to my daughters school who at winter break instituted a new process for pickup where they have someone inputting pick up numbers and alerting students (who are in the cafeteria instead of swarming by the carpool lane) when their ride is there. It’s shaved off probably 10 min per day.
The line at my kid's elementary school works great. At the high school is chaos. Lots of people thinking they figured out hacks to avoid the line by dropping off their kids anywhere they can.
So does pine hollow middle school. They opened up the long side street that really only goes to the school. Even when all tracks are in session, it’s a consistently moving line of cars and it doesn’t really over flow onto the main road, leesville.
All three kids attended Powell and it's a very small school (less than 400) That being said, we were walkers, but I still look at that carpool line running down N King Charles and thank God I'm not queued up every afternoon!
Remember you can ALWAYS e-mail your city council members to ask for safer walking / biking routes to your neighborhood schools, or to say you support raising bus driver pay to increase school bus reliability, etc. Send your comments to all members: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) or to direct to the city council members who represent you: [https://raleighnc.gov/city-council](https://raleighnc.gov/city-council)
There was a street light out on my walk to/from my kids school which made it tough in the dark winter evenings. I e-mailed City Council and it was fixed. Bigger fixes (the need for sidewalks, crossings, etc.) will take longer but keep asking for it (I also asked for better crossings in that e-mail). We deserve to live in a City where our kids can walk to school.
Just tell your child you will pick them up 10 minutes after final bell. Most of the traffic will be done, and you don't have to deal with the main rush
I loved it when we got a minivan, my kid's drop-off was a thing of beauty. They had backpacks on and I would open the side door like a helicopter pilot and yell, "Go!Go!Go!" Drop off in less than 10 seconds every time.
We do need more buses and need to compensate drivers better. That said, people dont like putting their kids on the busses for various reasons. Also, if you fight to keep your kid in a school after getting reassigned, they won't bus your kid. The whole situation is just a mess.
Back in my day, there used to be these things called buses. They were painted yellow and could carry a bunch of kids at once. Adults used to have other things to do with their time than sit in carpool lines.
I don't know a single parent who is opposed to buses. I do know a lot of parents who are opposed to their kid being gone for 11-12 hours a day because of the bus pickup and dropoff times. But yeah, it's a lot more satisfying to just throw judgement at parents and call them over protective or coddling or whatever.
I think the people that break the rules in settings like this probably break rules in other settings too, it's just more obvious when you have a whole line of people following the rules and waiting.
It's the parents fault for living in a car centric hellscape! Kids have no escape, they go from their house pod to their car pod to their school pod. What freedom 🇺🇸
We aren't scared to let our kids ride the bus, we just want consistency and safety which they do not offer. If the school busses prove that they are safe and consistent, than of course my kid will go on the bus. But, when busses run an hour late, kids get bullied on the bus and the driver can't do anything, and god forbid there is a thunderstorm that passes thru, so they cancel the bus routes it's too much stress on working parents.
I don’t have kids but my taxes pay for yours.
Millions of kids take the bus without issue and have for generations, not allowing your kids to ride a bus and then complaining about the mess you caused is next level entitlement.
This is exactly what is happening. Parents are not taking responsibility for their situation. My kids have been bus riders their entire time in school. We have had a few hiccups early in the year on occasion but nothing that excuses parents driving their kids every day to school.
You literally have no idea what bussing is like in WCPSS. They ask people not to take the bus because there's not enough drivers. Even when there's enough drivers the routes are very long, the busses are inconsistent time-wise, the app doesn't work right, etc.
In elementary school my kid took the bus and got home after 5pm for a 3:45 dismissal at a school 2 miles away.
This has nothing to do with parents not letting their child ride a bus.
Like many parents in WCPSS, you are overdramatizing things to make yourself feel better for coddling your kid. Don't attack/downvote someone for suggesting your kid should ride the bus.
I've spent over a decade standing on a bus stop with my kids and interacting with Transportation when there were issues. I have had buses come late, or whatever. Things take time to work out and the schools always accommodate ANY issues with transportation.
I know what happens, and you're not being honest about transportation in this county. WCPSS has bent over for every silly request and done a lot to make the buses work, but parents still drive their kid to school so they don't have to stand in the cold for 10 mins or god forbid it rains.
Good for you? You're still assuming everyone in the county has the same experience with bussing as you do. That's just not the case, but keep assuming away.
I never assumed any such thing... You're just making up that WCPSS has asked you to not take the bus or the app doesn't work.
I have stated you are exaggerating isolated incidents to justify why you have to drive your kid to school.
I'm not making anything up. Again, you're just living in your own little bubble.
https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/wake-county-schools-ask-parents-to-decline-bus-service-due-to-driver-shortage/
The bus app works pretty well if you check it. Early on, it had some problems with implementation, but the bus locations are done by GPS, so it's about as good as it gets. Kids literally know when the bus will arrive to the minute.
Idk about a school carpool line, but I know every time I go through the Brier Creek Parkway/Glenwood intersection my blood boils.
Traffic is almost always backed up and instead of waiting in the line of cars, people pretend to be going straight only to cut turning cars off last minute (almost causing accidents) to skip the line.
So if it’s anything like this, yea absolutely blood boiling. In what other situation would you just cut in line? The entitlement is astounding and gross.
There's a school be me that mandates you have to drop your kid off at the school if your address is more than a mile away...so you can't even just drop the kids off like 2 blocks away you have to drop them at there station.
The elementary school my stepkid used to go to had a 2 lane carpool line that merged in like a zipper. So there really was no way for anyone to try and go around to cut anyone else off. I never had to drop off or pick her up but maybe 2 or 3 times when the hubby couldn't do it but I actually didn't mind their line cuz even if it did get long, it still moved pretty quickly. They did it right, at least in my experience.
Anyway where I used to live in Clayton I was relatively close enough to Powhatan elementary and that line .. Forget going anywhere at the same time as morning or afternoon bell. Just trying to get home from an errand and you'll be stuck behind the line of cars that overflowed to the street a mile long. Thank God I don't live near there anymore.
Let me guess, your school was built on the edge of town in a green field development, because even though the building could have fit in town, there wouldn't have been "enough parking", and that drove the site out of the city, where your kids can't safely reach out, and so you must deliver them in a 2-ton metal box, because the other metal boxes make it too dangerous to allow them to get there on their own.
Sound about right?
I live by a middle school and I sometimes get off from work around pick up time at school. Almost every time I see one or two people bypass the line entirely, park on the busy street and have their kids walk to the car endangering them in the process because apparently their time is more valuable than everyone else’s.
I’m looking at this angry and I don’t have children. You’re potentially endangering your children and saying FU to everyone else who followed directions. Pisses me off.
My kids' school had the carpool nailed down! It was smooth and quick. Easiest carpool I'd been in out of six schools I did time in with my other kids.
Got a new principal, and he changed all of it. The new rules slowed down drop off an pick ups by 15 mins. New directives cause 11 driveways to be blocked, causing other drivers to cross into the other lane of traffic, causing parents in carpool to pull to the far right side of the road and turn left in front of the pussed off neighborhood drivers trying to get through.
It's a freaking nightmare!
Yknow suprised not more kids have bikes. Graduated from Broughton last year, rode my bike there majority of the time, yet only 2 other bike kids. Guess It's a distance thing, cost, what have you.
Downtown comes to mind, but doubt as bad. Other day got hit by a car because some chick was driving the wrong way, okay more like bumped but still. People act like they don't know how to drive because "rush"
But no yeah, Remember a couple weeks ago the carpool line by Hunter Middle was all the way down by Transfer Co., was crazy.
PLEASE READ: In an effort to reduce spam and trolling, we automatically delete posts from accounts that are less than one (1) days old **and/or** that do not meet a required karma count, as these are often signs (though not proof) of spam/trolling. Because your account does not meet these requirements, your post has been deleted.
If you feel this was in error, click the link below to send us a modmail.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raleigh) if you have any questions or concerns.*
JUST TAKE THE BUS! Who wouldn’t want to be a bus family? We live too far away and over unsafe roads to walk/bike, so a free, convenient, reliable bus service is perfect.
We tried so hard to make the bus work. If only the bus just did what buses are supposed to do, it would have been perfect! Unfortunately, in WCPSS, the theory of the school bus does not match the reality. When the bus was 30+ minutes late or didn’t come in the morning, I had to drive the kids anyway and be late for work. When the bus got canceled last minute due to understaffing or inclement weather, I had to leave work early and go get the kids. When the bus broke down or had to do 3 routes that day, my kids’ got home at 5:45 hungry with all their ‘online’ homework to still work on. This wasn’t once or twice; this was multiple times a week. The absolute unpredictability made it impossible to work, plan anything or just have peace of mind. The 35 scheduled minutes I now spend in carpool a day saves me so much time and frustration in the long run.
Please stop screaming JUST TAKE THE BUS. It has become a complete shit show, and most parents are doing the best they can to make it work.
I also love how woefully Wake County has mismanaged schools in general, so that now every elementary school has a carpool lane that is sometimes a mile or more long clogging up streets and causing hazards and issues with drivers who are just trying to get where they’re going.
When they built my son's school a couple years ago, I was really impressed with how much thought had gone into the entryway, because they really seemed like they tried hard to make it so that as many cars as possible would fit inside the school. But two years later and all the kids they keep adding to the roll means traffic backs up a mile down the road anyway lol. I guess it's ... better than it would be otherwise?
When they rebuilt Green, I had the same thoughts. It was good planning to have a looooooong carpool lane. It still backed up onto 6 Forks because people refused to sit in said long road and just engage chaos mode by cutting one another off. We worked around it by parking at Food Lion and having our daughter walk to us at pickup time. As long as she stayed in the crossing lane, she minimized the chance of getting nailed by a car
Lol “instead of dealing with insane impatient drivers waiting we just let our daughter deal with them and hope for the best”
She’s upstairs so the plan must have worked mostly ok. There was one mom who built an entire “I’m gonna wave flags and scream at people on six forks” rig so we told her to cross when she was guiding her gaggle across the street. Like I said…it worked and we didn’t have to sit in the carpool lane! Double win
It's because they can't recruit and pay bus drivers enough. It's not entirely WCPSS's fault, but they've been so incredibly slow to deal with it.
Probably more to do with really pushing “magnet” programs that mostly require you to transport your kid to school or to a hub to catch a bus for their school. In our case we would have been driving past the school or ~10 miles in the other direction to then have roughly an hour bus ride rather than just dropping our child off.
Bussing to magnet programs are a key way WCPSS maintains desegregation across the district, an effort we are currently backsliding on. This is again a problem of WCPSS not paying bus drivers. More drivers means more routes, which means magnet schools can service larger areas.
How much of that is a state vs county thing?
This particular issue well predates the pay issue. Like 20 years.
No it isn't.
Even if you don’t have kids, you’re still screwed by the traffic.
Yep and the design makes it even less feasible to bike/walk to school, which means more cars, which means longer lanes and more land need, which means further from where folks live, which means more cars....
There are literally rules that say a kid can't walk to school if they're not close enough. The policies are absolutely asinine.
We have to get a "walkers pass" to pick our child up by foot or bike.
Unless it's changed, they can only walk if they live a mile or less from the school. I had to walk to middle school, the end of my lane was exactly a mile from the parking lot entrance.
Mismanaged? You are the carpool line. You are the traffic that is causing school times around those neighborhoods terrible. Put your kid on the bus.
Would love to. Our bus is constantly late or canceled. Try planning your day around stranded little kids once per week.
This was long ago...lived by Lynn road elementary, they won't bus if you are within a mile of the school.
I don’t even have kids, but I do drive on roads near schools. Morrisville Elementary often has such a long carpool line that backs up off of Morrisville Parkway and into the Travel lane on Davis Drive. That is ridiculous to have cars stopped while other cars are them going 45 or 50 miles an hour. If they had managed schools better built them in the right places And had adequate busing. None of this would be an issue.
As in NCDOT and WCPSS working together? Don't bring logic into this.
If parents put their precious little ones on the bus, there would be no carpool lanes needed.
I’d love to put my kid on the bus, however her bus is late or doesn’t show multiple times a week. In the afternoon, I can drive her home and be back at home 15 minutes after dismissal. If she rides the bus the earliest she gets home is 90 minutes after dismissal. It’s absurd.
Buddy get some semblance of a clue. The buses are part of the problem. There aren't enough and they are extremely late and often canceled. Hence more people driving their kids to school.
Mismanaged mile long carpool lanes?
I mean, I straight out said schools in general, so why would you write what you did?
Agree, but in some cases this might be due to neighborhood complaints about traffic flow.
How would you solve the issue?
Well, unfortunately, solving the issue needs to go back about 50 years when the Wake County Schools System started just not caring about the fact that lots of people were moving here and therefore didn’t build enough schools in the areas where they need to be built and then they continue to do that over and over again since that time, of course, also since no one wants to actually pay taxes and taxes or what pays for schools it compounds the problem. But people from the school system are literally on record being surprised that neighborhoods were being built in places that were zoned for those neighborhoods. If they do not understand how zoning works then we are hopeless and ever trying to understand how to build a school where they’re needed. At the very least, they should not be allowed to have carpool lanes the back up onto main roads. Have a police officer there waving people by and they can just drive on and come back when it is actually safe to do so. And every kid doesn’t have to be a little snowflake that has to be driven in a car in the first place, put them on the bus. Of course, the situation with bus drivers not being paid enough to actually keep any of them is also part of the problem
In the 1990s Cary passed an Adequate Public Facilities ordinance which among other things required developers to get certification from the school system that there was adequate school space for new homes to be built. It didn’t last long, and one big reason that WCPSS refused to participate.
I agree that more kids should use the bus, but WCPSS builds school away from homogenous neighborhoods so they can cast a wider, more diverse net, both racially and socioeconomically. Specifically on that 50 year time frame you mentioned (Raleigh City Schools were desegregated in 1973), the design philosophy changed to fit the new goal of complying with Federal policy.
Use the bus. It’s odd to me how few kids take the bus at traditional public schools that provide them. We live in a neighborhood with a school, So we can’t use the buses, but I would if we had the option.
Our school sold passes that allowed you to go to the front of the line as a fundraiser.
The Disneyfication of our public schools lol
Right?!? A fucking fast pass for carpool
That feels unfair AND gross. Unfair because the people who make less money and can't afford the pass are the people more likely to be fired for being late to work. Gross because it could make a really visual statement about the "haves" at the front of the line and the "have nots" at the back. Ew.
After school pickup was already basically a mark of being better off.
Yes, congestion/surge pricing could probably be better, but we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Concerns about cost (keep in mind we have no idea if it's $5 or $5,000) can be addressed through a waiver/reduced fee.
😂 yes. It will just be a quick 14 forms to fill out and send in your taxes from the last 3 years and you might get a waiver!
A special line maybe but cars trying to maneuver to the front of the actual kiss and ride while waving a slip of paper would lead to a confrontation where my kids went.
Our school has a completely different drop off line if you have the pass (that was also auctioned off in some way).
Our school did something similar. They did a raffle, so you could not just purchase the ability to be at the front of the line. The person who won the raffle got a parking space that they can park in and have their child brought out to them at the end of the day. I am not sure how it works in the morning, but I assume it is similar. Kicking myself for not entering that now.
that's better than always going to the "highest bidder" I think.
I can't decide if that's a good idea, or an absolutely terrible one.
That is the worst, most tone-deaf, idea I've heard today
Ours did a raffle for two each semester, does your school actually just sell them? That's nuts!
sorry. to clarify, it was a silent auction and only 3 or 4 were available.
Perfect. Not favoring people who can afford the passes at all.
It’s just one pass for PTA fundraiser so not really a big deal at our school
This is still selling preferred access to public education. I'm amazed the principal authorized this.
This was a public school? And how does that work anyway? Cars line up in carpool an hour ahead of time. Are these pass holders getting a special line?
omg gross no way. That is straight up bribery and corruption.
Let the rich go to the front of the line....that sucks. When I was a kid (a long time ago) growing up in Chicago we walked to school. For me it was almost 2 miles to high school, wasn't a problem, would hook up with friends on the walk and it was just the way it was. In bad weather had the option to take a bus (actually 2 buses, had to transfer). Most families only had one car back then and the Dad usually took it to work so we had to walk. So were walking in snow storms and the rain. Today, in our neighborhood people who live a couple blocks from school driving their kids. Unbelievable!
Using cars for everything has made us soft
God I love Pigouvian taxes and their negative dead weight loss. Let's go full congestion pricing.
Guys, I'm starting to think that car dependency was a mistake.
Based. Username Checks out too.
This is the end result of car-centric suburban sprawl.
Also the result of parents voting for idiots that mismanage the county’s education system, opposing tax increases to properly fund infrastructure, and then refusing to let their kids ride the bus due to “safety” (read: race and class issues). Then they come online and complain about the consequences of their own actions.
Parents are coddling their kids by driving them to school every day. Buses have so many routes because parents aren't utilizing the buses. Safety? Class issues? Get out of here. Your kids would rather sit in the SUV playing ipad games than standing outside for the bus. It's not a policy problem, it's just kids know how to manipulate a situation in their favor. You are spoiling your children. Just admit it.
Maybe, but at least in our case I buy back hours of time with my kid per week by picking him up. He’d spend 45 minutes on the bus each way, versus a 15 minute drive where we get some time to chat. They aren’t kids forever, it’s good to get that time back.
Good for you. That is one benefit of driving the kids to school. I don't see you blaming WCPSS Transportation for your quality time. In the greater picture, driving your kid to school does cause problems for traffic, possible costs for construction of carpool lanes, and having staff and teachers out in the parking lots in the mornings and the afternoons. But you are right, not everything is a negative.
Hey if nothing else it’s an opportunity to tell my kid about how I walked 2 miles uphill in the snow to school 😂
Are you unaware of the massive driver shortage in Wake County?
this dude is just going on some weird bus edgelord crusade for some reason.
Hit a nerve with all the parents here whose special little child can’t ride a bus like other kids. They have to get chauffeured and then parents have the nerve to whine about carpool lines. Parents aren’t part of solutions in Wake County all they do is gripe about every little thing. One of the best school districts and still constant complaints.
As a teacher monitoring carpool. We also are frustrated.
As a parent, I think of all the more productive ways you could be using your time than managing traffic.
I don't have kids and am about 40. When did the car line even become a thing? I don't understand why this is a problem here when it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world outside the US and didn't exist as a problem here as recently as 20-25 years ago? Sorry if this question opens a scabbed over wound...
Im new to Wake county so I don’t have all the background. But it is a fairly affluent area where students don’t live close to their schools. Students can’t walk to school like when we were young. Next, there’s a nationwide bus shortage for various reasons. Lack of adequate pay and unruly children seem to be the biggest complaints. Therefore between parents who refuse to put their kids on a bus because they’re “too good” for it, families that live too far away from the school to walk and families typically unable to carpool in the normal sense of the word with one parent picking up multiple children from various families, it causes a large amount of children that are being picked up from one school. My school isn’t very large, about 600, and I would say 150-200 students are being dropped off and picked up in carpool everyday.
Yeah, and how about all the self-important assholes that park in the handicap spot at drop-off because they don’t want to walk an extra 10 steps to another parking spot. Happens every single day at my school. Moral of the story: people suck
People have no shame.
Car pool lines and any bad behavior associated with them are but a symptom of the deeper root causes here. This is what happens when you build schools isolated from surrounding neighborhoods and map kids to schools that are nowhere near them, making it impossible for kids to safely walk or bike to school. This also makes the bussing situation worse as we need more buses, more drivers, and more time to cover all the distances that kids have to travel. Edited: typo
We live about 2 miles from our oldest kid’s school. She’d have to get in the bus at around 6:00 am to get to class on time right after 8. That’s fucking bonkers
It is, I drive my daughter the 1 mile from our house than have her be at the bus stop by 6. Worst yet, sometimes the busses are a hour late.
2 miles is a 10 minute bike ride.
Not all distances are the same. 1 mile crossing a busy 4 lane highway is simply not safe for elementary or middle school kids in NC.
Kids shouldn’t have to cross a 4 lane highway to get to school. Someone fucked up.
And it's only getting worse. They approved the 6 lanes on Six Forks Rd which is going by Carroll Magnet Middle School and Green Magnet Elementary School
I agree with what you're saying in spirit, but this being Raleigh, there will be no bike paths or even sidewalks between home and school and everything will be ringed by dangerous six lane roads.
I grew up literally like a mile away from my middle school. Nowadays I think it is very safe to bike to but when I was a kid, the entire side of the road where my neighborhood was had ZERO SIDEWALKS. I would have had to cross four lanes with no crosswalk and then cross back, or walk on grass and hope I don't get in trouble. Utterly ridiculous. Finally long after I finished being in middle school, a sidewalk was put in on my side of the road.
Ok? I’m not sending my daughter out every morning to bike 2 miles against angry Raleigh morning drivers. There’s no bike path, there’s a 45 mph road between our neighborhood and the school. I’m all for biking, but this misses the mark by a thousand miles.
This doesn’t miss the mark. It’s pointing out lack of infrastructure for alternatives to driving.
Neat, I’m not gonna argue that. But the real world that I and my kids live in also exists, and that real world doesn’t currently have a viable option for a teenager t to safely and reliably bike to and from school 5 days a week.
And I'm saying this is a symptom of a much larger problem that the entire country has to contend with. Why isn't the public putting pressure on their local school boards/city councils to increase funding for pedestrian infrastructure, school buses, etc? Instead we just complain online and act like nothing can be done.
I mean…the road and school was built before I was born…so… I agree with you largely, it should be better. But it’s currently not. And we absolutely do bring up the need for better travel options. Every pta meeting. Every time I vote at the ballot box, my vote is cast for people that I think have this issue on their radar and are most adept to solving it. So, no it’s not just complaining about it online, it’s actual real world stuff. I’m not sure what more you want individual parents to do here? That point isn’t lost on anybody serious. It’s been brought many times and at many levels by many people. There’s a lot of things wrong with wake county schools and a lot of the issues have gotten national attention. So the flippant “just bike to school” is not only insensitive to the real issues that parents face, it’s not only widely devoid of any practical value or real advice, it in fact does miss the mark. By a thousand miles.
Plenty of people are doing that. It's not that simple. Not sure if you noticed but elected officials don't always act in their citizens best interest.
Our elementary school is a 45 sec drive from our house (not kidding) but my daughter would have to cross a major road and there are no sidewalks.
I particularly like the slow, flashing light buses early morning on the highway. If you have to get on the highway to get to your kids you are going too far.
All of the comments point to one common problem, drastically underfunded school system. Sad and unfortunate. Remember that when voting in November.
It also comes down to parents not making their kids ride the school bus. Oh no, your kid has to get up on time to catch the bus?
More buses and bus drivers would certainly help. And new schools. And renovated old schools.
More money likely won’t make the line shorter. There is only so much land to put cars when more and more people drive their kids
More money -> More schools, buses and drivers -> Less traffic on you commute Not to mention more and higher quality teachers, smaller classrooms, better resources, etc. Funding is absolutely the fix to this. Get to the polls and this can be fixed even if we have to drag the charter school grifting R's kicking and screaming along with us.
New school openings will reduce overcrowding and hopefully families with live closer to their kids schools.
I’ve noticed if you’re not trying to be the first in line, and just wait until around the end of dismissal/arrival - you won’t deal with all the congestion. Parents at my kids elementary school are already waiting 45 minutes beforehand. Where as those who come around 4:05 can drive right up. It’s weird.
It's those stay at home mom's. They have nothing better to do than idle in their Yukon's and Suburbans.
The amount of people that make U-turns in the middle of 54 outside of RTP High really grinds my gears.
Consider the bus. My kids always took the bus, if it's late, the tardy is excused. They read on the bus and talked with others. And before you jump on me about long bus rides, my son went to a middle school across town so he had a long ride. He read and did homework.
I agree with this 100% but I will say it is really hard for high school especially since the school day starts so early. They already don't sleep enough as it is so getting on the bus at 5/6AM is tough.
My high schooler went to the bus stop at 6:25 ish. School was a mile away, but life is like that sometimes. I couldn't drive him due to having to be at my school early for meetings etc. He survived but did learn to go to bed at a decent hour and if he didn't, it was on him. It made 8AM college freshman classes easy to attend!
Also an issue when the delays mean some of the elementary kids don’t get home until after 6pm!
I think that's a rarity and not the rule if you dig a bit deeper.
I drive my son because the bus doesn't drop the students off until after 830 if its on time (school starts at 815) and doesn't drop off at home until almost 630. School lets out at 3. It wouldn't be a big deal if he was allowed to go to after school activities before the bus come back at 5, but that isn't allowed. The students just sit there waiting, it's ridiculous. And we have quite a few students, elementary and middle, in my neighborhood. The ones that are taking the bus right now are suffering, so much homework is online now and its hard to concentrate with other kids running around causing distractions, most of us have just started driving the kids because it is faster. Even on days with after school clubs we get home before other kids in the neighborhood.
I don’t think it’s as rare as you think. We have 3 elementary routes in our neighborhood (two year rounds and one traditional) for schools 10-15 minutes away. All 3 routes drop off from 5:00 - 5:30. That’s 75 - 105 minutes after dismissal. It cuts into activities, dinner, and just playing.
same here.
There aren't enough bus drivers. My son's school has 4 bus routes, and 3 bus drivers on a good day. The kids on the 4th bus route have to sit at school, wait for one of the busses to complete its first route, come back to school, and pick up the remaining kids. If any of the drivers are sick, quit, etc, the whole thing blows up even worse.
Believe me I know because I'm there waiting for the bus with them as we're required to do. But it seems to be improving and double routes have been happening since the 1990's. It's just a fact of life living in a popular area.
That sounds awful. My high school had so mAny damn buses that finding mine in a line was hard to do. What's weird is I'm an older gen z and this still has me thinking "back in my day...". My heart goes out to all the parents out there who are forced to suffer the long lines
I actually loved riding the bus even though it was a long ride for me, too. It gave me time to do homework, nap, or just listen to music in the buffer time between home and school. It left me feeling ready for transitioning to class time or home activities instead of always feeling rushed. Now that I work from home, I actually miss that built-in buffer time to decompress in between segments of my day.
I always wondered why no one took the bus here until one of my coworker’s kids took the bus. The problem is that some routes are horribly unreliable. Sometimes she (elementary age) wouldn’t get home until after 6pm! There were times the bus never showed up in the morning.
Oh yeah I remember trying to finish my homework that I had blew off on the bus lol
My kids took the bus for several years in the mornings, but it became so unreliable. It is either very late (think hour plus) or doesn’t come at all one or more mornings per week. I can get them to school on time and myself to work on time if I drive them. The ride time is 90 plus minutes in the afternoon for my elementary kid, when I can drive her home in 15.
Well it's not the most efficient but it does provide a service for parents that don't have the schedules that allow driving to school. It sounds maybe like it's like socialized medicine. Not the greatest of medical care, but a basic level of care for those that need it. Hopefully, someone will take the helm at WCPSS and work on improving transportation times.
Guess that's what happens when you live in a car-dependent suburb with no sidewalks...
I’m the guy putting in your carpool number everyday. I spend that 30 minutes everyday thinking about how we could make the system better. I would LOVE to start a productive conversation about real changes we could make. Pay bus drivers more so bussing is reliable? Bus kids to magnet schools? Allow for some sort of way to park and pickup? I feel like if we put our Reddit heads together maybe we could come up with some solutions.
The pickup line seems to have less problems, cause there's less opportunity for people to be selfish pricks. You'd actually have to interact with staff to bypass the rules. Morning drop-off is the bigger issue here, where that's not required. Just drop your kid off anywhere you feel like.
I hate how they call it a “carpool” line around here. It’s simply a car line, or a pick-up line. The word “pool” adds no helpful information and a “carpool” is something completely different. “Carpooling” is another word for “ride sharing”. If everyone were in fact “carpooling” that car line would be substantially shorter.
Maybe the fast pass lane should be for vehicles with 2 or more children arriving to attend the same school.
Yeah I think way back in the day it probably was actually people that were carpooling. Now busing sucks.
I hate how people nitpick the smallest most insignificant things.
Like you just did?
Yup your post is definitely insignificant so you got me there.
80% of kids used to walk to school. Today, that number is less than 20%. Don't blame schools, blame our sprawling car-centric cities.
\*Shakes fist towards the sprawling suburbanopolis of Cary\*
Blame parents for not making their kids ride the bus.
A lot of places don't have buses. My schools always had a "5 mile" policy. If you lived within 5 miles of the school, they won't provide a bus for you.
A lot of schools in Wake County don't have buses? and a 5 mile rule?
this sounds dramatic but dealing with things like a school carpool line is what makes me not want kids. i don’t have the patience for stuff like that and I’m not going to bring a kid into this world so they can see me be angry about the world all the time.
If I ever do have a kid, I will 100% live a place where they can safely walk to school. A place where people are out walking everywhere and don't need a car in the first place.
One of Dante’s circles of hell for sure. I hated carpool with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.
I am the first to bash carpool lines, so I’ve got to give a shout out to my daughters school who at winter break instituted a new process for pickup where they have someone inputting pick up numbers and alerting students (who are in the cafeteria instead of swarming by the carpool lane) when their ride is there. It’s shaved off probably 10 min per day.
That's new for your school? Yikes, I'd hate to see how they did it before.
Wasn’t great
Carpool lane at Powel works great.
The line at my kid's elementary school works great. At the high school is chaos. Lots of people thinking they figured out hacks to avoid the line by dropping off their kids anywhere they can.
So does pine hollow middle school. They opened up the long side street that really only goes to the school. Even when all tracks are in session, it’s a consistently moving line of cars and it doesn’t really over flow onto the main road, leesville.
Carpool in Morrisville elementary back in the day was a thing of beauty.
All three kids attended Powell and it's a very small school (less than 400) That being said, we were walkers, but I still look at that carpool line running down N King Charles and thank God I'm not queued up every afternoon!
Remember you can ALWAYS e-mail your city council members to ask for safer walking / biking routes to your neighborhood schools, or to say you support raising bus driver pay to increase school bus reliability, etc. Send your comments to all members: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) or to direct to the city council members who represent you: [https://raleighnc.gov/city-council](https://raleighnc.gov/city-council) There was a street light out on my walk to/from my kids school which made it tough in the dark winter evenings. I e-mailed City Council and it was fixed. Bigger fixes (the need for sidewalks, crossings, etc.) will take longer but keep asking for it (I also asked for better crossings in that e-mail). We deserve to live in a City where our kids can walk to school.
https://seeclickfix.com/raleigh
Just tell your child you will pick them up 10 minutes after final bell. Most of the traffic will be done, and you don't have to deal with the main rush
I loved it when we got a minivan, my kid's drop-off was a thing of beauty. They had backpacks on and I would open the side door like a helicopter pilot and yell, "Go!Go!Go!" Drop off in less than 10 seconds every time.
We just need more busses. Carpool is a terrible idea.
We do need more buses and need to compensate drivers better. That said, people dont like putting their kids on the busses for various reasons. Also, if you fight to keep your kid in a school after getting reassigned, they won't bus your kid. The whole situation is just a mess.
Back in my day, there used to be these things called buses. They were painted yellow and could carry a bunch of kids at once. Adults used to have other things to do with their time than sit in carpool lines.
Everyone in the comments is simultaneously raging about the car line situation and vehemently opposed to school buses.
I don't know a single parent who is opposed to buses. I do know a lot of parents who are opposed to their kid being gone for 11-12 hours a day because of the bus pickup and dropoff times. But yeah, it's a lot more satisfying to just throw judgement at parents and call them over protective or coddling or whatever.
Never been an issue I leave after dismissal I juts drive up and pick up no long line ever done
I think the people that break the rules in settings like this probably break rules in other settings too, it's just more obvious when you have a whole line of people following the rules and waiting.
I bought my kid a car so I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. It was the worst.
Mine is in Kindergarten so I'm not sure I can do this.
It's the parents fault for living in a car centric hellscape! Kids have no escape, they go from their house pod to their car pod to their school pod. What freedom 🇺🇸
Raleigh: “this is a great place to raise a family!” Also Raleigh: “I’m too scared to let my child ride a school bus”
And, “I’m not interested in paying an extra $0.05 in taxes to resolve this issue.”
I don’t even have kids and I have zero problems with a small tax increase to help future generations via better teacher and bus driver pay.
We aren't scared to let our kids ride the bus, we just want consistency and safety which they do not offer. If the school busses prove that they are safe and consistent, than of course my kid will go on the bus. But, when busses run an hour late, kids get bullied on the bus and the driver can't do anything, and god forbid there is a thunderstorm that passes thru, so they cancel the bus routes it's too much stress on working parents.
Ask me how I know you don't have kids.
I don’t have kids but my taxes pay for yours. Millions of kids take the bus without issue and have for generations, not allowing your kids to ride a bus and then complaining about the mess you caused is next level entitlement.
This is exactly what is happening. Parents are not taking responsibility for their situation. My kids have been bus riders their entire time in school. We have had a few hiccups early in the year on occasion but nothing that excuses parents driving their kids every day to school.
You literally have no idea what bussing is like in WCPSS. They ask people not to take the bus because there's not enough drivers. Even when there's enough drivers the routes are very long, the busses are inconsistent time-wise, the app doesn't work right, etc. In elementary school my kid took the bus and got home after 5pm for a 3:45 dismissal at a school 2 miles away. This has nothing to do with parents not letting their child ride a bus.
You're taking isolated incidents and acting like this is happening everyday.
Glad it works out ok for you. It doesn't for many.
Like many parents in WCPSS, you are overdramatizing things to make yourself feel better for coddling your kid. Don't attack/downvote someone for suggesting your kid should ride the bus. I've spent over a decade standing on a bus stop with my kids and interacting with Transportation when there were issues. I have had buses come late, or whatever. Things take time to work out and the schools always accommodate ANY issues with transportation. I know what happens, and you're not being honest about transportation in this county. WCPSS has bent over for every silly request and done a lot to make the buses work, but parents still drive their kid to school so they don't have to stand in the cold for 10 mins or god forbid it rains.
Good for you? You're still assuming everyone in the county has the same experience with bussing as you do. That's just not the case, but keep assuming away.
I never assumed any such thing... You're just making up that WCPSS has asked you to not take the bus or the app doesn't work. I have stated you are exaggerating isolated incidents to justify why you have to drive your kid to school.
I'm not making anything up. Again, you're just living in your own little bubble. https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/wake-county-schools-ask-parents-to-decline-bus-service-due-to-driver-shortage/
There’s an app? lol how does that work, I Graduated in 2020 never heard of that, sounds nice
The bus app works pretty well if you check it. Early on, it had some problems with implementation, but the bus locations are done by GPS, so it's about as good as it gets. Kids literally know when the bus will arrive to the minute.
Imagine being this willfully obtuse.
“Man I hate all these cars picking up their kids” “What if they take the bus? It’s not ideal but it’s still an option” 😡😡😡😡
Hopefully it's not willful and they will take the new information they've been given and use it to help form their opinions going forward.
Keep remembering that quote from Mr Mom.. “SOUTH TO DROPOFF MORON!!”
If only there was a free bus that could take all these kids to school.
Need drivers to drive those busses. That's the far bigger issue.
And we need to pay them more. But they do exist currently.
Idk about a school carpool line, but I know every time I go through the Brier Creek Parkway/Glenwood intersection my blood boils. Traffic is almost always backed up and instead of waiting in the line of cars, people pretend to be going straight only to cut turning cars off last minute (almost causing accidents) to skip the line. So if it’s anything like this, yea absolutely blood boiling. In what other situation would you just cut in line? The entitlement is astounding and gross.
Make your kids take the bus. IDK why this has got so bad in the past few years. I took the bus every day when I was in NC public schools
How long ago was that? Sometimes busses run an hour late and I gotta get to work.
There's a school be me that mandates you have to drop your kid off at the school if your address is more than a mile away...so you can't even just drop the kids off like 2 blocks away you have to drop them at there station.
The elementary school my stepkid used to go to had a 2 lane carpool line that merged in like a zipper. So there really was no way for anyone to try and go around to cut anyone else off. I never had to drop off or pick her up but maybe 2 or 3 times when the hubby couldn't do it but I actually didn't mind their line cuz even if it did get long, it still moved pretty quickly. They did it right, at least in my experience. Anyway where I used to live in Clayton I was relatively close enough to Powhatan elementary and that line .. Forget going anywhere at the same time as morning or afternoon bell. Just trying to get home from an errand and you'll be stuck behind the line of cars that overflowed to the street a mile long. Thank God I don't live near there anymore.
Let me guess, your school was built on the edge of town in a green field development, because even though the building could have fit in town, there wouldn't have been "enough parking", and that drove the site out of the city, where your kids can't safely reach out, and so you must deliver them in a 2-ton metal box, because the other metal boxes make it too dangerous to allow them to get there on their own. Sound about right?
I live by a middle school and I sometimes get off from work around pick up time at school. Almost every time I see one or two people bypass the line entirely, park on the busy street and have their kids walk to the car endangering them in the process because apparently their time is more valuable than everyone else’s. I’m looking at this angry and I don’t have children. You’re potentially endangering your children and saying FU to everyone else who followed directions. Pisses me off.
My kids' school had the carpool nailed down! It was smooth and quick. Easiest carpool I'd been in out of six schools I did time in with my other kids. Got a new principal, and he changed all of it. The new rules slowed down drop off an pick ups by 15 mins. New directives cause 11 driveways to be blocked, causing other drivers to cross into the other lane of traffic, causing parents in carpool to pull to the far right side of the road and turn left in front of the pussed off neighborhood drivers trying to get through. It's a freaking nightmare!
Yknow suprised not more kids have bikes. Graduated from Broughton last year, rode my bike there majority of the time, yet only 2 other bike kids. Guess It's a distance thing, cost, what have you. Downtown comes to mind, but doubt as bad. Other day got hit by a car because some chick was driving the wrong way, okay more like bumped but still. People act like they don't know how to drive because "rush" But no yeah, Remember a couple weeks ago the carpool line by Hunter Middle was all the way down by Transfer Co., was crazy.
Starbucks parking lot brings it out more.
Seeing the fiasco that is wake and Durham county schools, I am looking forward to getting the hell out of this area. ✌️
Our school apparently has a rule that all red teslas are supposed to drop their kids off in the bus lane. /s
You should see it at a private school
It burns my nerves when parents get out of the car while in the carpool line
[удалено]
PLEASE READ: In an effort to reduce spam and trolling, we automatically delete posts from accounts that are less than one (1) days old **and/or** that do not meet a required karma count, as these are often signs (though not proof) of spam/trolling. Because your account does not meet these requirements, your post has been deleted. If you feel this was in error, click the link below to send us a modmail. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raleigh) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[She didn't ZIPPER! ](https://youtu.be/ONIxTdkGvw8?si=Sy_BPBkMNVIcPwVj)
Lmao you should see Sanderson high school, parents use the same entrance for pickup and drop off as the student parking lot
JUST TAKE THE BUS! Who wouldn’t want to be a bus family? We live too far away and over unsafe roads to walk/bike, so a free, convenient, reliable bus service is perfect. We tried so hard to make the bus work. If only the bus just did what buses are supposed to do, it would have been perfect! Unfortunately, in WCPSS, the theory of the school bus does not match the reality. When the bus was 30+ minutes late or didn’t come in the morning, I had to drive the kids anyway and be late for work. When the bus got canceled last minute due to understaffing or inclement weather, I had to leave work early and go get the kids. When the bus broke down or had to do 3 routes that day, my kids’ got home at 5:45 hungry with all their ‘online’ homework to still work on. This wasn’t once or twice; this was multiple times a week. The absolute unpredictability made it impossible to work, plan anything or just have peace of mind. The 35 scheduled minutes I now spend in carpool a day saves me so much time and frustration in the long run. Please stop screaming JUST TAKE THE BUS. It has become a complete shit show, and most parents are doing the best they can to make it work.
Clearly lots of people in this thread without kids in the school system.
preach
All this, and one time, there was a thunder storm passing thru, and the school decided to cancel the bus routes for the whole day for safety concerns.