[munchenphile]

School start is really bounded by the start of the average parent’s workday, unfortunately. Mom and Dad start work at 9 am. Kids need to be at school before then. None of this 10 am start talk makes sense for the kids that aren’t on the bus line and have parents that drive them to school.

[quartesixte]

This is the problem with American cities in general.

A very beaten dead-horse, but look at Japan:

Elementary Schools and Middle Schools placed within a MAXIMUM 10min walking pace distance at that age group’s walking pace.

High Schoolers able to commute to their school of choice due to robust public transportation network.

We have designed cities that create as byproducts incredible amount of self-inflicted wounds on our culture. We don’t have to live this way. This is a choice.

Parents go to work or send their kids off. A parent personally accompanying a student to school is an indicator of something having gone wrong.

[shiftpgdn]

I see so many new urbanists saying we’ve made a tremendous mistake, and I agree. But how can we fix it? Tear down all the cities and start over?

[quartesixte]

Basically, yes. In piecemeal. But yes.

Major US population centers who are not New York should have, at the start of their explosive population growth, experienced a massive construction boom. There should be so many people employed making a city right now that the other problem we have with people not making a living wage because they are working jobs that weren’t designed to be life-sustaining careers might not be a problem!

Tear down all the “historical homes” and build mid-sizes apartment buildings. Build more schools. Hire more teachers.

The “character” and “flavor” of a city will come naturally and organically as an emergent property of trying to build a massive city to house millions.

Cities if done right turn into quasi-perpetual motion machines that feed itself the economic activity to sustain itself. And because they are denser and more compact, resource consumption can be scaled to be more efficient. Oh and all the people who used to be sprawled out now concentrated? That frees up land to build industrial centers on the outskirts that feed more economic activity.

This is an oversimplification that ignores a LOT of externalities to economic activity and histories of urban decay, but essentially: yes cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles essentially need to be rebuilt from the ground up and hopefully it will be as a result of conscious decisions and not a Great Fire of London/Earthquake of 1906 type disaster.

The other problem is bureaucracy and that is actually a consequence of the way US regulations approach regulation. It will make everyone’s life easier if we had very perspective building regulations that can be just checklisted through instead of ambiguous, litigious wording.

[apexalpha]

Scratch the minimum parking requirements and allow people to fill up those spaces with new buildings. Maybe require basement parking or multistory parking at least.

Over time the city will grow denser and all other stuff like bike lanes and public transport will simply make sense.

[goodpoint]

> we’ve made a tremendous mistake

Yes. Move away from car culture.

[mschuster91]

> But how can we fix it? Tear down all the cities and start over?

No, that's not needed. There is one first start that is relatively easy to do, and many cities are experimenting with it all over the world: ban individual-transportation cars, only allow taxis, ambulances, delivery services, tradespeople's / construction vehicles and transportation for the disabled. Then, use the space on the suddenly free roads to introduce a solid 24/7 bus network and return the space that's not needed any more to the public by building green stripes, bicycle lanes and pedestrian stripes.

[otagekki]

It's all fun and games until you have to transport 2 weeks worth of groceries with joint pain, or Ikea furniture in the street because the deliveryman couldn't access your street.

It's all fun and games until you find out that you can't have as many customers as you thought to because people can't find a parking spot near your shop, also because your delivery area shrinks because your deliverymen use bicycles and won't drive uphill or more than 5 km from your place.

Paris is implementing this and if you live in the suburbs, going out to Paris is a logistic nightmare. And no, taxis won't always accept to drive you to your hometown with no night time bus service.

Not advocating for car culture, but failing to account for citizens' actual needs makes your city unliveable.

[noahtallen]

Picking on a few examples:

- Your lifestyle can adjust so that you don’t pick up two weeks of groceries at once and buy in bulk at Costco. You could walk to a fresh market instead. You can get a few days groceries at a time. Getting groceries doesn’t have to be the massive effort it is here in North America. Or there are small electric mobility options.

- Customers and parking. This doesn’t necessarily follow. If a street is very walkable and people use it frequently, people can easily notice a shop and walk in. That doesn’t really happen if you’re driving, as you don’t really interact with or see the outside world. So in theory, a vibrant walkable street can support a lot more local economic activity. Beyond that, the amount of land used for parking in North American suburbs is so vast that there is actually less economic activity because so much land is effectively sitting there empty. If a parking lot is as big as the store… well, that’s one more store that could exist!

[quartesixte]

> It's all fun and games until you find out that you can't have as many customers as you thought to because people can't find a parking spot near your shop, also because your delivery area shrinks because your deliverymen use bicycles and won't drive uphill or more than 5 km from your place.

Existing dense and ultra-dense cities do not face these problems or have adequately addressed them. Or these aren’t actually problems.

Increased density in a neighborhood means increased foot traffic which means increased business.

Delivery of large items become an essential business activity. The Japanese versions of many multinationals offer free, same-day delivery of any items bought in-store if you live within a 30 miles of the store. You actually can have it scheduled to have the delivery truck coincide with when you come home.

Why do you assume the delivery service will use bikes and not mopeds, small cars, or other powered mobility systems?

Businesses respond to the limited range of their customers by increasing their presence. Look at New York — a bodega at every corner. Small businesses can thrive by filling a niche inside a walkable radius and have decreased marketing costs and higher customer discovery because tens of thousands will walk by every day. So large corporations create more jobs and independent mom-and-pops can reliably compete.

Denser cities don’t have your above problems because the nature of dense cities make all of those things moot. Ive seen many of these same counter arguments before, and my only thought is that Americans have lived in our current state for so long we fail to imagine a better life.

[otagekki]

Culture is harder to shift, and I was mostly talking about France, but your points on increased density neighborhoods are valid nonetheless.

French cities are currently not getting denser because of perceived social problems such as poorer working population leading to low economic activity, poor academic performance and eventually and a rise of crime. Paris in particular concentrates a really-non-negligible fraction of the metropolitan area's economic activity but cannot become denser that it is right now because current regulation restricts high-rise buildings in the city proper [1]. That leads to inflated price which drive people away.

Same-day delivery? Good luck with that. 24h is the best they can do, and that's 79 euros -- by the way -- for your sofa that's being delivered to your home, when you'll be there (or not, lol). That being said, Japanese versions likely factor in the delivery cost.

> Why do you assume the delivery service will use bikes and not mopeds, small cars, or other powered mobility systems?

These exist, and there are even moving companies that use that as a selling point. Don't see how practical it is though, especially when driving uphill, as Paris is not exactly as flat as Amsterdam, Chicago or Miami, for example. Mopeds or cars still won't deliver more than 5 km away from their base, but customers can easily drive for 45 min to a good restaurant 20 km away.

[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A8glements_d%27urbanisme_...

[asoneth]

You raise some good points, but I wanted to touch upon this one:

> Paris is implementing this and if you live in the suburbs, going out to Paris is a logistic nightmare.

The needs of a neighborhood's residents are distinct from and sometimes opposed to the needs of non-resident stakeholders such as suburban commuters, absentee landlords, and tourists. Ultimately I think every neighborhood needs to strike some balance between these stakeholders.

But the extent that most American cities prioritize the needs of commuters and visitors over their own residents has always seemed odd to me. For example, many cities spend huge sums of money destroying local neighborhoods to widen freeways so commuters can move further from the city. This results in a destroyed local tax base and increases in suburban property values.

All else being equal I would have expected most cities to operate like Paris and prioritize the needs of local residents above the needs of visitors.

[mschuster91]

> It's all fun and games until you have to transport 2 weeks worth of groceries with joint pain, or Ikea furniture in the street because the deliveryman couldn't access your street.

The former case can be solved by either going shopping more regularly - or by making that possible in the first place by making sure there are grocery stores at regular walkable distances. If you have to use a car to transport your groceries or other regular (!) shopping, your community is underserved.

The latter case can be solved by regulating delivery services to have enough staff and technology (i.e. pallet trucks) to be able to haul all the furniture from the nearest delivery drop-off point.

> It's all fun and games until you find out that you can't have as many customers as you thought to because people can't find a parking spot near your shop

Objective data from Berlin's experiment shows that this concern is relatively unfounded - they looked at anonymized cellphone tower data to determine a sizable increase in pedestrian traffic for the shops [1]. For stores selling stuff that is not easily transportable without a car (e.g. kitchens), there should be incentives to move these to a new location that is accessible with cars or by delivery services.

> Paris is implementing this and if you live in the suburbs, going out to Paris is a logistic nightmare.

Well, they are learning. The important thing was to get started in the first place. Now with real-world experiences they can adapt and improve.

> And no, taxis won't always accept to drive you to your hometown with no night time bus service.

Again, the answer of this is government regulation. In Germany, taxis are mandated by law to serve you.

[1] https://efahrer.chip.de/news/friedrichstrasse-in-berlin-schm...

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Well, you can get almost everything delivered. The only challenge is second-hand stuff, but this can be addressed with car sharing

[seanmcdirmid]

A lot of elementary and middle private school students commute to their schools by train in Japan.

[quartesixte]

I lived in a very working/middle class neighborhood so I rarely witnessed this. But yes this is also a thing.

[thatjoeoverthr]

These are teenagers. Give them house keys and a skateboard.

[munchenphile]

Yeah, sorry. That doesn’t work in a huge percentage of areas in the US. Heat, cold, darkness, lack of infrastructure, and distance.

When the high is 110 F in a Phoenix suburb, you can’t ask the 14 year olds to skateboard 20 miles to school on a country road with no breakdown lane. Similarly, you can’t ask kids from Maine to skateboard to school in the dark on ice.

Whenever this topic gets brought up, a bunch of seemingly childless city dwellers think they’re making some massive revelation suggesting that kids just get their own butts to school at a comfortable 10:30 am.

It’s actually pretty simple: Both parents work. Somebody has to drive the kids to school (hard requirement — there’s no bus and a bike/skateboard is too perilous). Work starts at 9 am. School has to start earlier than that.

[mostlylurks]

Cold weather and darkness are not obstacles. Here in Finland the winters are darker, colder, and longer than in the vast majority of the US, yet even elementary schoolers usually go to school by themselves, often by foot or on a bike, sometimes by taking a bus or a train.

The problem that the US faces with respect to this issue is primarily caused the design of american cities (including the surrounding suburbs), which are laid out in a manner that makes the use of a car a practical necessity for getting anywhere. You wouldn't have to worry about a 20-mile country road to school out of a suburb if you instead made the sensible choice of placing services (like schools) right where they are needed, as european cities tend to do, instead of 20 miles away.

[scottLobster]

You'd be surprised. Note that Sioux Falls, the capital of South Dakota, has substantially lower average lows in Winter than Helsinki.

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/finland/helsinki/climate https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/sioux-falls/climate

Yes our car-dependent infrastructure is an issue, but it's infrastructure we've built up for the better part of a century. Changing it will be slow and gradual, and in the meantime cold weather and darkness are issues in much of the country. Also hot weather in other parts of the country (heat stroke can be a serious concern in the Southwest)

[herbstein]

Helsinki is one of the Southern-most cities of Finland situated on the edge of a large body of water. Instead, take a look at this Not Just Bikes video covering biking in Finland during winter: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU

The weather in Oulu during winter looks a lot like the weather in Sioux Falls, except there's a lot more precipitation (snow) in Oulu.

[3maj]

Laughs in Northern Canadian

[jds_]

Pierre is the capital of South Dakota - though Sioux Falls is the largest city.

One statistic I've read for eastern South Dakota is that it's one of the worst states to live if you hate extreme cold and extreme heat as we have both - sometimes within a week of each other!

[tmmx]

Sioux Falls is the biggest city in South Dakota, not the capital city. The capital city is Pierre, SD.

[scottLobster]

Doh! Yeah that was a brain fart...

[b112]

Some of what you say in your second part makes sense, although it has absolutely no bearing, nor is it a counter argument to the post you are replying to. It certainly doesn't refute the parent poster's statements about now, today, right now, instead, at best, maybe over 30 years, change could slowly be enacted.

However, as a Canadian, some of what you say is just plain gibberish. My rural county, not province or country, but county, is on its own larger than some European countries, with a population of 20,000.

If you tried to put schools within even 10 miles of every kid, you'd end up with hundreds of one room schools, with a teacher teaching 4 kids.

The problem here is, there is no one size fits all. Trying to make suggestions needs to be more location specific.

Because when someone starts talking about rural living in the US and Canada, Finnish experience has no parallel.

I mean, come on, I've seen farms, just a single farm owned by one man in rural Manitobia, larger than massive cities!

Millions of acres of land, with just wheat and rye on it! Owned by a dude, presumably larger than some countries!

[mostlylurks]

My comment was not an attempt to refute the entirety of what the parent comment stated (since I agree with most of it), merely a response to a tangential aspect of it.

I am quite aware that what I mentioned is not feasible for some of the more rural regions that exist in the US and Canada. However, those constitute a rather small portion of the population. It is as you say; there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but certain solutions are so widely applicable that they could bring significant benefit to the lives of most americans and are thus worth pursuing (where relevant) even if they do not solve the challenges faced by the small number of people living in the more rural regions of these countries.

[thematrixturtle]

> Because when someone starts talking about rural living in the US and Canada, Finnish experience has no parallel.

The Finnish municipality of Inari is over 17,000 sq.km, in the same ballpark as the entire country of Israel, with a population of 7,000. This gives it a density of 0.47 people/km2, four times less than Manitoba.

[bombcar]

Average population density can be misleading, especially if all 7,000 of those people basically live in one town.

[HWR_14]

No, the problem isn't suburbs. Those are densely packed enough that a bus picks kids up. It's rural areas that don't have mass transport, which makes sense.

[Ar-Curunir]

Suburbs are not densely packed. Picking up kids in a school bus would require over an hour, even in the small suburb that I live in. Rather, everybody either drives to school or is dropped off there: the parking lot of the high school is the same square footage as the school itself (excluding the football field).

[HWR_14]

Then you probably either (a) really live a rural area/exurb or (b) don't understand that they can operate more than one bus or (c) live in one of the areas that has had local government intentionally killing off bus service.

As to the local high school parking lot, that's not an "efficiency" thing - it's a "young people getting a taste of freedom" thing.

[RHSeeger]

> the vast majority of the US

It's worth noting that <hotter | colder> than the vast majority of the US isn't a particularly useful metric.

- The people that say their kids can't walk to school because of the winter weather could be in an area where it's constantly below freezing and it's common to have over a foot of snow on the ground most of the time (ie, there is ONLY the road to walk on, and it's unsafe because of the snow). - The people that say their kids can't walk to school because of the heat could be in an area where 110degree weather is common (somewhat less of an issue since most school doesn't happen in the hottest months; but there is summer school). - There are plenty of places in the US where the houses are so far apart that its not realistic to have a school that even moderately close to more than a couple of them.

Even if "most of the US" is more temperate than "some location where kids walk to school", there's still plenty of places where its considerably less reasonable to walk to school year round.

[yencabulator]

> ie, there is ONLY the road to walk on, and it's unsafe because of the snow

As a Finn, the first part is an infrastructure issue and you're building it wrong, and the second part is just plain old weird; snow on the ground doesn't make walking unsafe. Too much snow makes walking slower and more tiring, but that circles back to infrastructure, specifically snow plowing.

[RHSeeger]

Solving the infrastructure problem is extremely costly. Sure it can be done, but that means someone else doesn't get done. You have to pick your battles.

And walking on the road when the road has snow on it (so is slippery) IS dangerous if there's any amount of traffic. Even if you can stay to the side of the road (which is hard when there's a lot of snow), the risk of being hit is increased because cars can lose fine control under such conditions.

[stale2002]

Ok, maybe it is partly caused by the design of cities.

We aren't going to completely redesign all of America's cities for the purpose of making sure teens get a bit more sleep though, so the point is irrelevant.

[mostlylurks]

>completely redesign

That is quite the hyperbole.

>for the purpose of making sure teens get a bit more sleep

Add to that the time and resources wasted by millions of parents daily driving around instead of doing something economically productive, something that keeps them healthier, or just anything that doesn't cause environmental damage. And the fact that this is just one small instance of a much bigger issue affecting most people (anyone regularly commuting or using services within or near cities) to some degree. It's obviously not the most important issue out there right now, but it is a whole lot of wasted time and effort that could be eliminated, and you could probably even do it gradually without implementing any sudden sweeping changes.

[stale2002]

> That is quite the hyperbole.

It is really not. The topic is a legal change in california to change when school starts.

And to respond to this fairly minor topic by suggesting that cities be rebuilt is absurd.

I am going to say that there are more immediate solutions to kids getting enough sleep, due to school starting times, than "Well just redesign all our cities to be more like europe!"

[asveikau]

I agree with the "redesign all cities" goal, even as hyperbolically stated.

The health benefits far exceed just sleep.

But I think it would take more than 100 years to change this, and most importantly, many in the US are not interested in such a change whatsoever.

[DocTomoe]

No need for a complete redesign. Further up, it was suggested to put the schools near to where the students are - in the suburbs. That's a common sense policy Europe does naturally, and which everyone who spent some time playing SimCity (or the likes) understands.

No need to nuke LA and rebuild, just take a few plots in the middle and put a school in there.

[RHSeeger]

This seems to not take into account the size of towns. For example, the one I live in is ~23.5 sq miles. If you put the schools in the center, you're looking at approximately a 2.5 mile walk each way for the children on the outskirts (the town isn't perfectly round, but close enough). And even that is assuming there's a direct "as the crow flies" path; which there certainly isn't.

At the very least, for most towns, you're looking at moving a bunch of roads around. For many of them, you'd need to add more schools to keep the distances reasonable. I expect, for a large number of the town, the term "complete redesign" is a reasonable description.

[rtkwe]

House keys and a bus though could work though for 90%+ of kids even in places with extreme weather [0] and you could have pre-school programs for the 10% that can't either because their too far for bussing or can't get themselves to the bus, eg those with assorted disabilities. You're right though the school start time is tied to it's function as free daycare for children so parents can work, COVID proved that is a critical part of schooling for the modern economy.

[0] Would need to provide more stops and ideally a better more consistent schedule so kids could get there just in time for the bus. Also for hot weather school picks up in the morning so even the hottest places aren't 110+ at pickup time.

[bigDinosaur]

Why is it that we can radically transform human society in the first place, but we simply cannot design our cities and schools and work days to just let teenagers sleep in a bit more? There's absolutely nothing immutable here and these are all problems that can be solved. Why can't workdays be vastly more flexible for parents? Why can't public transport be vastly superior to allow teenagers to get to school whenever needed?

These also aren't weird, aspirational goals that have never been done before, there are plenty of places where public transport is good enough even in rural areas so that kids can actually get to school. The areas so sparsely populated that that's impossible are...not the majority, to put it mildly.

[shreyshnaccount]

Because it's not economically beneficial, or atleast no one's made it economically beneficial yet. Because obviously teenagers wellbeing << money

[achenet]

I disagree with this, I think it's just a force of habit, where outdated industrial era behavioral patterns keep propagating themselves because no one takes the time to rethink them.

There are plenty of companies with flexible working hours, and large open-source programming projects with completely asynchronous workflows.

Now yes, there are some valid reasons for a business, such as a shop or restaurant, to have certain opening hours - for most shops, being open during the day and at similar times to other shops (to increase chances that a customer who comes to buy something from one shop will be drawn into the shop next door) is ideal.

However, there is no valid economic reason that I can discern for the vast majority of businesses and the school system to keep blindly imitating 19th century factories in their work hours.

[shreyshnaccount]

Why does no one take the time? Because they don't get paid for it. The root cause of almost everything is "I made more money that way". I remember reading that Feynman tried to work on an education board, but gave up because of corruption, lobbying and no one really caring about learning outcomes while prescribing books for kids..

[RHSeeger]

> economically beneficial

In some cases, it's more a concern of economically _viable_. Sometimes, the fact that something would cost more means it's not possible. We have teachers that have to pay for the children's school supplies out of their own pockets, because the school system doesn't get enough money.

[shreyshnaccount]

Which happens because schools don't matter as much to the people in charge as the military-industrial complex, it's a self fulfilling prophecy..

[mjmahone17]

Phoenix area schools all are required to provide busses for junior high and high school kids that live more than 2.5 miles away. That is generally a walkable distance, even in the May and August heat. I know, as from middle school on I did exactly that (walked or biked ~2 miles to and from school in the Phoenix metro).

For longer distances it’s really not a big deal to bike to school. No one needs to be dropped off by their parents, unless they live out of district and chose to go to a school other than their local one. And even in that situation, many schools open a half hour or more early, where kids can be in the library or cafeteria well before class starts.

[andreareina]

2.5 mi is almost an hour away on foot. That target shouldn't be more than ~30 minutes which is what, 1.5 mi?

[brianwawok]

2.5 miles is a < 10 minute bike.

[andreareina]

> That is generally a walkable distance

[mellavora]

I used to bike 7 miles to school in Minnesota, year round, back in the days when we had snow. Old "road racing" bike (skinny tires).

In the winter wearing a trench coat, a dr. who scarf, and beetle-eye mirrored sunglasses so my eyes didn't freeze.

[eyelidlessness]

I’ve ridden skinny tires in the snow and… yeah I’d probably chance it in MN (at least Saint Paul where I actually lived through a winter, can’t speak to Minneapolis but I’d bet it’s just as passable). I’ll never do it again in Seattle, where even arterial streets have a grade unsafe for foot traffic in freezing weather conditions.

[fsckboy]

you can't speak to Minneapolis from St. Paul? I've never been to either but Minneapolis-St. Paul is one city, isn't it? Twin Cities, Minnesota Twins and all?

[eyelidlessness]

Nope, not the same city! Twin cities yes, but different municipalities. There’s even a little burb in between.

[sgerenser]

Uphill both ways, right?

[chrsig]

I grew up in an incredibly rural town (population ~1200) in new england. I had to walk half a mile down a dirt road to catch a bus at 6:30am. It's often still dark out at this time -- having a later start and still having to do the walk would have actually been safer. Not that it was particularly dangerous. I was more worried about a coyote than anything else. The bus ride was an hour long.

If my parents had time, they'd drive me to the end of the road and let me sit in the car, or if i was lucky drive me to school (allowing me to sleep in more)

> Somebody has to drive the kids to school (hard requirement — there’s no bus and a bike/skateboard is too perilous)

I don't agree with the assessment that there's no bus. If there *really* isn't, change that.

In general: adjust society to make more sense. We know teens have higher sleep requirements. Meet their needs. Find solutions. Work environments can adjust, even if they don't like it.

Maybe well rested teens will be less likely to shoot up the school shrug

[fsckboy]

when I was a teen I was sent to bed at 10, had no trouble falling asleep and got plenty of sleep. I know teens like to rebel and do what they want and stay up late, but that's different than saying it's difficult for them to actually fall asleep at a reasonable hour and it seems rather drastic to rearrange everyone else's schedule to accommodate staying up late playing games and texting

[chrsig]

Research has found that teens need more sleep than adults.

Just some quick results from a google search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528821/

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/tee...

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.h...

[fsckboy]

I'm well aware of the research, I'm talking about the scheduling.

And more research will be produced showing that teen clocks are also offset, but it's still the case that I have all my anecdata about what it feels to be tired, to get enough sleep etc., and what it feels like to be a teen rebelling against any rules.

hunter gatherer teens did not sleep late every morning, they had to get up just like everybody else, probably at the crack of dawn

[standardUser]

Where are school buses in your scenario? I grew up in a couple different sprawling suburbs and I could always just walk to the bus stop.

[maxerickson]

As buildings closed due to shrinking enrollment, my small town school system went to picking up kids in front of their homes.

[rglullis]

And then people say that they live in suburbia because it is better to raise children...

And then people say that all the work they do is for the benefit of their children...

And then people say that those against mandatory school attendance are crazy...

[cycomanic]

I always wonder when reading the posts about how it's impossible for kids/teenagers to get to school by themselves because of weather, are the parents happy with the type of dependent children they create? Children that have to rely on their parents to get anywhere until well into their teenager years seems like a disaster to me. How will they ever learn to become independent?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Not wanting your kid to walk 2 miles to school when the windchill is -40F isn't an independence problem; it's a safety issue.

[diordiderot]

Sadly they are happy with dependent children.

[InefficientRed]

> When the high is 110 F in a Phoenix suburb, you can’t ask the 14 year olds to skateboard 20 miles to school on a country road with no breakdown lane. Similarly, you can’t ask kids from Maine to skateboard to school in the dark on ice.

80% of Americans live in urban or suburban areas [1] and the average school commute distance for high schoolers is (or, was, can't find a recent number) 6 miles [2].

FWIW, I lived a little under 5 miles from school in a non-bike-friendly suburb and managed to transport myself to and from school just fine without a car. We had 100 degree days in the summer, but we also had... summer break. Maybe one hot week in August, but nothing I would call dangerous.

The "20 miles down a county road" scenario is an outlier. If that is representative of your community, then the school policies of your community (including start time) should reflect that reality. The 80+% rest of us are having a different conversation about a different place. No reason to get angry about it.

> city dwellers

Far more Americans live in metro areas than in nonmetro rural areas.

> childless

The vast majority of American children do not live in rural areas. Rural areas are, on average, old and managing to get older.

> think they’re making some massive revelation suggesting that kids just get their own butts to school at a comfortable 10:30 am.

The California law requires a start time no earlier than 8:30am, which is already several hours later than 10:30.

When I was in high school our start time was 7am or something like that, but there were "negative hours" so you could show up as early as 6am. There was cold breakfast in the cafeteria with a staff member present, or you could go to some classrooms for tutoring (I think one per core subject). Hazy on the exacty details -- it was a long time ago -- but I do remember the doors were unlocked 1 hour before classes started and you could either hang out or get tutoring.

Starting -1 hour at 7:30am gives a parent 1.5 hours to commute from school to their job by 9am.

--

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...

[2] https://nhts.ornl.gov/briefs/Travel%20To%20School.pdf

[naz]

What time does school finish and why isn't getting home a similar issue?

[munchenphile]

Getting home is a big issue for a lot of families. School ends around 3 pm, but most kids do some sort of after school activity like a sport to bridge the gap until after 5 pm when a parent can come through the pickup line. Growing up, there was also just general “after-school” programs. Basically just day care for after the school day that would cost extra.

[odessacubbage]

most schools are located near public transportation and even if there are no bus stops near the home it is generally easy enough for kids to get to their parent's office/rec center/ friend's house etc. basically you have a lot more options when everyone is no longer rushing to be at work or school

[HWR_14]

Those kids in Phoenix and Maine should just take a school bus like half the kids in America that cannot take themselves. Phoenix suburbs aren't that sparsely populated.

There are a lot of solutions that don't require school starting before 9 am.

Also, while you may be correct about it affecting a huge area of the US, it doesn't affect many children in the US. Precisely because it's a problem with low density. Maybe the true simple solution is that rural children all telecommute and do teleschool.

[odessacubbage]

from the ages of 8 to 13 i woke up at 5:45 and did a double public bus transfer every weekday to get to the out of district rich kids school, approx 45 miles

at 14 i biked along county roads to get to the hippy school, approx 14 miles.

both my parents worked. i am not a city dweller. kids can absolutely get themselves to and from school and doing so at 9:00 or 10:00 will mean safer roads with less ice and less traffic. if school started at 10:00, snow days would virtually be a thing of the past. skateboards have a lower fatality & injury rate than bikes(mostly due to the inherently lower speeds involved), although they have limitations for long distance transport and offer no luggage capacity.

[bluejekyll]

“there’s no bus”

Aren’t school districts required to offer busing to rural communities? That’s the way it was done in PA.

Granted, that doesn’t fix the sleeping in issue since we had to catch the bus pretty early.

[kortilla]

When it’s 110 in Phoenix don’t send the kids to school because it’s summer.

[daniel-cussen]

That's what Americans get for building the suburbs so poorly. And Phoenix is uninhabitable, nobody lived there before AC.

Let work start later too. Tell that boss he can get with the times.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

There are definitely jobs that start before 09:00.

My workplace starts at 06:00 or 07:00 depending on how much work is on, there are no other options.

[GayforMoleman]

> That doesn’t work in a huge percentage of areas in the US. Heat, cold, darkness

Lmao how do people talk like this with a straight face.

[popcube]

and this is a easier way to make sure kid had arrived school!

[NikolaNovak]

in Ontario you are not allowed to leave child alone before age 16. I'm sure there are states with similar age limits.

I do not agree with that - but it's the current law, so we can't just leave out early teenagers alone and run to work.

I too was and am a late sleeper and school mornings were torture. Just saying there is indeed a big dependency between work starting times and school starting times - though that can be solved with optional school child care rather than mandatory early classes.

[mandelbrotwurst]

Wait, what?! A 15 year old cannot be left unsupervised? The parent can't leave to pick up a loaf of bread and the child can't walk over to the neighbor's house?

That's a horrible law and I sure hope there are no states with a similar one!

[NikolaNovak]

I agree that's a horrible law. A few states do have similar laws. Illinois e.g. is 14 if I recall correctly.

Note, a state that does NOT have such a law is not necessarily a better one - It leaves the decision up to either various criteria (which may be well or poorly defined, subjective or objective), or opinion/assessment of jury/judge/child protection services. And in a state that does have a law with age such as 8 or 9, does not mean you are absolved of responsibility for leaving a 12 year old home. Ultimately, this is a tricky subject that's hard to objectively measure and decide.

What it comes down to is that times/culture have changed. I walked to school on a non-trivial path when I was 6 years old in grade 1; it was about a kilometer, crossed couple of busy intersections and a bridge. So did all of my classmates. But that was in Bosnia in the 80's. Today, in Canada, a 6 year old walking to school unsupervised for 15-20 minutes, in summer and winter? Largely a complete no-go. Multiple neighbours and observers would report it to police - and this is not an opinion, this is local newspapers articles.

[mandelbrotwurst]

Culture shifts are real. That doesn't mean they're justified. It's certainly not a topic without nuance, but I will say that if and when I have children I will do my best to ensure that they are capable, aware, and that their autonomy is respected within my local community.

[NikolaNovak]

As I said, I agree with the notion - we are certainly raising our kids to be independent, critical thinkers and safe operators - and I believe we are succeeding.

To the latter part though - "ensure their autonomy is respected within local community" - unless you started right now and are heavily involved in politics, local school boards, local bylaws, etc... you may find that WAY harder than you think. Culture shift is right - it's not about talking to your 3 neighbours. In the use case of walking to school - it's every neighbour on the way from home to school plus every teacher and school official plus parents of all the kids in the class plus any bystander, jogger, passerby, driver etc who may see your kid alone on the street. The news articles I've seen locally are rarely about the next door neighbour - frequently it's some self-appointed good-samaritan stranger who took it upon themselves to call police or lodge a complaint; or a school counselor etc.

[brianwawok]

Many states in the US have very vague laws about “when the child is ready”. Basically if anything bad happens you are in trouble.. so people are slow to talk about it.

[Gigachad]

This is child abuse in America.

[avip]

We live 25 minutes driving from school. ~2h of (dangerous) bike ride.

[maxerickson]

To what degree should society pick up the cost of that choice?

[judge2020]

To the degree the community allows it. If society as a whole decided on making things better, tons of things would change (including a mixed zoning and multi-family housing overhaul), but as it stands local cities and counties have vast power in managing themselves, and they have a vested interest in continuing to divert resources to their biggest income sources (single-family homeowners).

[maxerickson]

Here schools are not part of cities or counties.

When I imagine what a 25 mile dangerous bike ride looks like here, it's living 25 miles out in a place where the US highway is the only route to town. But there's a high school out there, so it wouldn't be 25 miles.

Obviously other situations will exist, but living 20 miles from the school you attend is a corner case and will often be driven by choices the parents are making.

[thescriptkiddie]

It can be argued that single-family homes and the associated low-density land uses are only cash cows in the short term, and are in fact ticking timebombs in the long term.

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

[thescriptkiddie]

Wow. I would consider it unacceptable living more than 25 minutes walking from school.

[irrational]

And a bachelor old man friend who looks like a homeless person and claims to be creating a time machine.

[aetherson]

Having parents not be present for the go-to-school time is certain to raise absenteeism significantly. As you point out, these are teenagers.

[mbreese]

It is also bounded in the other end by sports. If your school day goes too late, you won’t have time in the afternoon/evening for sports practices. So, if you still need X hours for classes, you’ll need to start early enough to get over in time for 1-1.5 hour practices.

(It also applies to other extracurricular sports, but I doubt anyone really worries about play practice schedules)

[munchenphile]

Well, even in a world where theater is taken as seriously as sport, at least you can do theater indoors at all hours.

You can’t really play soccer after dusk if the field is outside and you don’t have lights. So lots of outdoor sports have strict daylight constraints.

[NonNefarious]

The school day ending at 3 doesn't preclude sports. A 9 a.m.-to-3 p.m. school day was the norm for generations, and there's no reason it can't be now.

[ProjectArcturis]

You could do sports in the morning instead.

[GoOnThenDoTell]

Remove the sports, can do that on the weekend

[munchenphile]

Delusional. Sports are competitive. They require daily reps. Sports are also meant to keep kids physically active and healthy, and to establish a routine of physical activity into their adulthood (alongside intellectual productivity). You can’t just be physically active and healthy on the weekend.

[cgriswald]

Then have sports be an acceptable substitute to gym classes and a regular part of the day. I doubt anyone can explain to me why the captain of our football team also needed to be in gym class playing flag football with us in order to graduate in a way where the answer isn't bureaucratic.

At some point you have to decide on an optimum between time, sleep, and output.

[munchenphile]

I’m not defending daily gym class. I’m defending daily sports.

I was fortunate enough to go to a high school that did not have a gym period, but required all students to play an organized sport.

Gym in large high schools is a waste of time due to the student to instructor ratio. One frustrated gym teacher to 50+ kids playing dodgeball? Of course you’re going to have theater kids just going through the motions and goth kids behind the bleachers smoking cigarettes. It’s not real exercise.

You need small rosters, organized practices, uniforms, referees, fans (students and parents) and intra-school competition. It creates seriousness and expectations. You can’t hide from your coach when there’s only 14 kids on the roster. You need to do the sprints with everyone else and take the drills seriously.

I don’t think this scales beyond smaller high schools. Not enough facilities, not enough coaches, not enough money.

[danenania]

That sounds great to me as an athlete, but I know there are many kids who would hate being forced to be part of organized sports.

The important thing is that they get exercise of some kind. Maybe just allow them to choose whatever form of exercise they want as long as they do something each day?

The school could offer sports but also allow them to walk, run, lift weights (when old enough), play tag, do yoga, or whatever they prefer.

If a kid truly hates all exercise and refuses to cooperate, I guess there’s only so much you can do, but you could at least remove as much friction as possible and try to meet them where they are. Anything that gets them moving will offer huge physical and mental benefits over just slouching in shitty plastic chairs all day.

[ghaff]

It's not just sports. I didn't do sports in high school but I had quite a few other after school activities. And, no, it wouldn't make sense for everyone who wanted to do extracurriculars to come in on Saturday on a regular basis--probably driven by parents.

[mensetmanusman]

We had sports in the morning, starting at 6 AM. It definitely helped to wake you up for the rest of the day.

[Brybry]

High schools already do sports into the night hours anyway.

I don't know that "too late" has much meaning here.

[Angostura]

In the UK schools get around that problem by running 'Breakfast clubs' kids can turn up early and get a nourishing breakfast from a bit before 8am. The school day doesn't start until just before 9

[dunefox]

That still means they have to get up early, though.

[midasuni]

So how does school stopping at 2:30pm work? How do kids get back home?

[usrn]

Yet another problem caused by having both parents work.

[Siira]

They could make the first period an optional free study session. This problem is not that difficult.

[derobert]

For high school, the youngest of which are 14, probably closer to 15? That really doesn't seem like a requirement.

Well, except when they have to get out the door before 6:15am...

[wheels]

...and most people have to work until 5 p.m., which is why all schools go until at least 5 p.m.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

There is no reason for the tyranny of the minority to dictate terms on everyone else.

Any parent that wants to torture their kid with a 7am start is free to do so.

That choice however shoulsnt dictate the school time for everyone else.

Early birds can show up to a long recess pre-class time but class should only start at 10am or so