Georgetown Day and parking

[Anonymous]

New poster here, also a parent. I've been following this thread with some interest. I sat in the car pool line today for 20 minutes (first bell). So frustrating. Everyone who thinks the parents are complaining should remember the children are also waiting inside. The lights on MacArthur and Q St don't coordinate at all, so even after the long wait to get DC, leaving school is yet another wait. I could easily have parked around the school and had my child in 5 minutes.

[Anonymous]

The GDS parents posting here (whether its 2 or 3 of you or several!) should take your concerns to the school. Do you feel you won't be heard if you do so? We are looking at schools this year for our child and this has an informative thread. It won't make my decision but it does give me pause as DC would be going into kindergarten next year if admitted. That is awfully young for a shy and introverted child like mine to not be walked in. But I worry the most that parents post here rather than feel they are empowered to take action. I was given the impression at the tour that parents at GDS were a involved and strong part of the community rather than people reduced to whining on an anonymous board. Obviously the concerns are valid because no one has come out and said that the parent posters don't have something real to complain about. So why isn't the school and parents working together on this?

[Anonymous]

See, now that people aren't milling around at pick-up, they need to resort to DCUM to compare notes, LOL! So long as everyone fuming in her car thought she was probably alone in feeling this way, the odds of collective action were slight.

I don't think that parents feel disempowered generally at GDS -- just that people feel somewhat sheepish about raising the car issue. It's trivial compared to educational stuff. It may appear selfish (or as if you have separation issues wrt your kid). It disproportionately affects the youngest kids (which means it disproportionately but not exclusively effects newer families). And it's a fairly recent turn of events at a time when everybody's busy with other stuff (like holidays).

[Anonymous]

Do other schools have these type of carpool rules? If so, what is the normal time it takes to get through the carpool line at dropoff and pickup?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do other schools have these type of carpool rules? If so, what is the normal time it takes to get through the carpool line at dropoff and pickup?

People reading this thread are either GDS parents or people interested in GDS. They are unlikely to know what goes on in other schools except by hearsay. I know that I don't! There is another thread about car pool rules more generally but not too many people have responded.

[Anonymous]

I have a child in P/K at GDS. She loves running in by herself in the morning and loves running out to meet me at the car. Waiting 20 minutes doesn't bother me, just bring a book, bills or a newspaper. There are plenty of opportunities to meet new parents, just email them! I chose GDS because it is right for my child. It's not about me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a child in P/K at GDS. She loves running in by herself in the morning and loves running out to meet me at the car. Waiting 20 minutes doesn't bother me, just bring a book, bills or a newspaper. There are plenty of opportunities to meet new parents, just email them! I chose GDS because it is right for my child. It's not about me.

It is a mistake to characterize other parents who have written in as being less concerned about their kids than you. Kids and parents are different. Your child may be fine running in by herself. Others may need extra attention. You are also better than most if you are able to pick up the phone and call people who you have never casually spent time with. At least in our class, the quality of the parent interactions has fallen off dramatically since October.

[Anonymous]

I just don't think 8 a.m. is the time to chat with teachers when 20 children are running into the classroom at the same time. I'd rather have my daughter's teachers focus on my daughter than on me. If there appears to be a concern, the teachers have been available via email and telephone. As for quality of parent interactions, I have found weekends a great time to schedule a playdate for both the kids and parents, even if just for lunch and a movie. Meeting parents during volunteer opportunities, and there are plenty at GDS, is not a problem.

[Anonymous]

The Obama girls are great...but imagine how terrible traffic jams would have been if they had gone to GDS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anyone who parks illegally or drives in a way that endangers others should be ticketed.

there are plenty of legal spots around the neighborhood.

I used to live one block from GDS, right on Q Street. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that we loathed the GDS parents who descended on our neighborhood every single day at dismissal time. I have never seen such a collection of poor driving, bad parking, illegal parking and LITTERING in all my life. It was appalling. Parents allowed kids to drop school papers, gum wrappers, lunch bags, empty juice boxes and the like all over our sidewalks and by extension, into our front gardens. (My husband even found some kid's TROMBONE one day sitting in our front yard in the case - more absent mindedness than littering, but still!) Parents used to leave their cars parked wherever they could, probably thinking "I''ll only be a minute" but it was tremendously difficult for the nighbors who HAD to park there (we had no driveways on Q Street) and had kids, groceries, etc. to negotiate. Yes, the school was there before we bought so it's not like we didn't know there was a school next door, but we didn't expect the litter and the cars parked willy-nilly in illegal spots or poorly parked with tires up on the sidewalk.

Don't kid yourselves, ladies. There certainly were not plenty of legal spots in the neighborhood - and mostof you certainly weren't being very neighborly to your Q Street neighbors.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry, it' s just not the case that "most" people parking to pick up kids park illegally or litter. I understand that it's a daily annoyance to have people park in your neighborhood, especially when the demand for parking all comes at the same time. (I know because I live near both a Metrorail station and a major commercial area, so I street I live on serves as parking for those uses). But it's also the case that public streets are, well, public streets and when you know that there's a particular hour each weekday when it's hard to park in front of your own home, you grocery shop before or after that hour.

To address the issues you cite, I'd rather see GDS police illegal parking and littering than try to forbid legal parking.

[Anonymous]

Good fences make good neighbors.

[Anonymous]

As a parent at GDS, I am baffled to read about other parents on this board who claim not to care that they are effectively blocked from building community in the easiest way possible - seeing each other at drop off and pick up. Volunteering is great but it does not take the place of a school community being allowed to gather in a normal way on a daily basis. I am equally baffled that other parents don't care about easy access to teachers and classrooms. We all know that 8 a.m. is not the best time to have indepth conversations, but its a really effective way to get to know teachers in those first few years. Short daily interactions matter!! You can learn an enormous amount of what is going on in the class in those daily 5 minutes.

[Anonymous]

So go into the classroom. No one is "effectively blocking" anyone. Really. Maybe other parents just don't want to walk in their children. Personally, I just ask my child what is going on. If you ask each day, you'll find out.

[Anonymous]

Well, if you're rule-abiding and don't live within walking distance of the school, then this new policy effectively blocks you from casual/routine visits to the classroom. By appointment only and with pre-arranged on campus parking is a very different regime.

If the L/MS school were located in a neighborhood with good public transit access (as the HS is), the policy might be reasonable. But even a five mile trip tends to take an hour or more if you have to rely on the buses in and out of Palisades (and that assumes that your home (point of departure) and maybe your workplace (next destination) are also public transit-accessible.

Some kids give detailed answers re what happened at school today; others don't. And some of the detailed answers are accurate; others aren't. And even if you get a detailed and accurate answer, presumably what your DC observes (and how s/he interprets it) differs from what you'd notice.

I'm not 19:52 but I think she has a valid point that shouldn't be treated so dismissively. She's not asking that other parents be compelled to walk their kids in -- she's asking that she have that option, as other GDS parents have had for years.