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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3454 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 2024

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In the US public schools I attended, we were restricted to eating lunch in the cafeteria. We were only granted liberty to leave the campus for lunch during our senior year. In suburban/rural districts most students are bussed and walking home and back within a 45 minute period isn't practicable (and at many schools, walking isn't an option at all).

OK, at every school I attended in Canada, it would have been unusual for a student not to walk to school. There must be some students that live nearby and walk though. Are they forced to eat at school?

In my primary school a minority of students walked to school. None were permitted to leave school during the day and all ate in the cafeteria during lunch. In senior high it was a similar situation to primary and only 12th Graders were permitted to leave. At my middle school no one was permitted to walk as the school was only accessible via a road with heavy traffic traveling at 45mph+.

That's so strange. Why would they design it that way? Is the school not in a residential neighbourhood?

No, it is in the middle of what used to be a cow pasture (and was still surrounded by it when I went there). The school (built on a 60+ acre property in the '70s) is centralized to serve a group of exurban communities to ensure kids don't have a long commute time.

I believe that the idea is that rather than trying to draw a boundary between who is or isn't allowed to leave based on where they live, a blanket policy is applied to everyone.

The other aspect here is one of liability. I'm not sure how legally liable the school would be for anything that would happen to a student who is allowed to leave the school during the school day, but it would probably be bad optics for the school if a student got injured/arrested/pregnant during school hours because they were allowed to leave the school grounds unsupervised, so "even students who could physically go home for lunch aren't allowed to leave" is probably considered a feature rather than a bug.

This doesn't make sense to me. The school isn't responsible for what happens to the students after school or on the weekends. Why would it be any different at lunchtime?

I'd say that the difference would that lunchtime is a small break during a time in which the school is otherwise responsible for the students, as opposed to the weekends and after school.

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