Two of my friends have children who have just entered kindergarten at our local elementary school. I learned from them today that the school has a policy disallowing children to ride bikes, scooters, skateboards or the like to school, even when accompanied by a parent. I was shocked that such a policy could exist. At the last school where I worked (private, not in our town) kids would ride their bikes and scooters or walk with their parents to school and then they’d leave their bikes, etc., at school and ride them home at the end of the day. I did some research and apparently our town isn’t too bad off because some towns don’t even let you walk to school.
Our town only provides free transportation to children who live within a two mile radius of their school, so if you live within the two mile radius you need to pay for the bus or your parents need to get you to school somehow and the overwhelming majority of children live within two miles of their elementary school in this area. I don’t believe that the middle schools and high school are covered by such a policy, but haven’t looked into it yet.
Here is an article about a boy and his mom who shunned his school’s policy by riding to school:
One of my friends is getting around it by biking to school and the parking bikes in the park across the street from the school. Why should parents have to “sneak around” to bike their kids to school? We live within a mile of the school and I would want to be able to ride my son to school at least some of the time.
What is your school’s policy?
