| > 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 |