I have only been back on school pickup duty for 7 days and I’m already murderous.

We have been doing distance learning for TWO YEARS. yup. There’s three kids in my house. I’m pretty tired. In September I dropped down to 2 students when my eldest went back on campus. Oh, yes, students as in I was/am the teacher. Now it’s February and we’ve jettisoned a second kid back into the schools. I’m still homeschooling the last one but that’s another blog post.

After a two year respite from packing lunch boxes and shuttling my children to and from campus, I’m not sure it’s a fair trade. To be free of teaching my kid for 6 hours or spend 5 afternoons per week foaming at the mouth. It’s really too close to call.

Why doesn’t California do public school busing?

I’m from New England and the yellow buses were a part of the community. You cursed your life if you got stuck behind a bus on a long rural road. But unless you lived around the corner from the school, your kids got a ride.

Not here though. I’ve read that only 9% of Californian children are receiving state funded school transportation. What? Yet as of January, there is a law requiring me to scrape my dinner leftovers into a compost bin.

But we’re just going to completely ignore the awesome carbon footprint of 200 parents, idling their cars for 30 minutes, 5 days a week, at just one neighborhood elementary school in the second largest district in the most populous state.

I digress. Back to the assholes.

These people are too busy and too important to wait in the queue and feel like they can double park in the lot, causing peril for other families and inciting my ire.

Nothing really earth-shattering to report. I’m going to have to go back to photographing license plates again and ratting on those tools to the front office lady. And she’s feisty, so, fair warning.

All of this could be avoided if we had some for sight and provided public transportation for these children. It’s little wonder that we’re all so cranky at 2:30.

Thank the gods that we have a disability placard. (That beautiful blue tag is my favorite accessory.) If I get to school 30 minutes before the bell I’ll probably get a parking spot. You may remember that there is actually an extra disability space because of my complaining. https://cynthiazorabedian.com/2020/03/03/invisible-disabilities-are-misunderstood/

The takeaway is: plus side, I’m down to 1 kid in my homeschool classroom. The downside is I didn’t even get a month’s grace before I’m back to seeing red tail lights.

I swear, I am capable of writing about other things than autism and school, but those topics just happen to be what burns my biscuits most regularly.