Sunday, May 18, 2008

It's All About the Timing

The town where the kids go to school is about 5 miles away. That doesn't sound like much, but that ends up being 25-30 minutes round trip. What that means is that, if I don't have to drive over there to pick someone up after school or get them there a little early, I don't want to do it. Unfortunately, the administrators and teachers at school do not share my feelings. It seems that every time there is an after-school meeting of this club or that one, it's only supposed to last about half an hour. Last week Cory had a National Honor Society meeting after school. It was supposed to last 15-20 minutes - just long enough to ensure that he could not ride the bus home. Couldn't they just have a meeting during school? Or have one day out of the week that the buses run late so they could have the meetings then?

I think part of it is that a lot of the kids have sports practice after school. They're planning to stay anyway, so it isn't really inconvenient for them, and they don't want to take too much time for that. For me, it means a special trip to go pick Cory up. Or it means Beth needs to hang around for a while after school and bring her brother home. That obviously makes a lot more sense, but Beth tries her best not to see it that way. She raised a fuss when I told her I needed her to bring Cory home, since she's already there, so I didn't have to make a special trip. Fuss or no fuss - she did wait, and she did bring him home. She even called me to let me know she was waiting for him. It's good to see that she can be responsible and help out.

We tried to explain this very clearly before she started driving - along with the privilege of driving comes responsibility, too. Sometimes it just takes practice. Tomorrow she gets to leave early for school, because Cory needs to be there at 7:30 for a field trip. I'll go ahead and pick him up at 3:30 since she needs to get home and get ready for work, and I need to run to the bank and deposit the concession money, anyway. Still, just about 15 minutes before the bus would get to school in the morning and half an hour after school gets out in the afternoon. Not very good timing, if you ask me.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, I hear you. Our schools are 10 miles from home and are a good 40-45 minute round trip. I hate the afterschool rehearsels and meetings. Oldest daughter is out of school and youngest doesn't drive. There are activity buses, but you don't know here they are going to drop off your child. It would be SO convenient for us parents if the could meet over lunch or if they had a special activity period for that stuff.

    ReplyDelete

I love your comments! Keep them coming.