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Health & Fitness

Coping with Middle School Gridlock

A word of advice: program your GPS to take avoid any street within a two-mile radius of a middle school at drop-off or pick-up.

Raise your hand if you have needed to get your children to or from or middle schools.

Raise your hand if you have needed to get anywhere within a two-mile radius of San Jose or Sinaloa over the past three days within 30 minutes before or after the start or dismissal time.

Wait a minute ... raise your entire hand, not just one digit.

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I can relate. I'm right there with you. I'm the one with the carpool of three kids on Wednesdays and Fridays. Maybe you're the one who pulled the illegal U-turn right in front of me on Sunset Parkway. Or maybe you're the one who wouldn't let the poor lady exit the circle because, darn it, you'd been waiting too long already. Or maybe you're the one who decided the "No Parking/Passenger Loading and Unloading Only" sign didn't apply to you.

No, wait, you're the one so frustrated by it all that you've decided on Day 3 that homeschooling a middle schooler isn't such a bad idea after all.

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I'd like to be surprised at the gridlock we're all experiencing. I mean, if we're going to shove 200 more students this year into San Jose, surely consideration would have been given to how those students would get to school. Of course "someone" would have been charged with planning. When you consider how many of those students assigned to the school live miles and miles away, out toward Bahia and Blackpoint and Atherton, surely "someone" would have been in charge of the logistics of transportation.

Both Sunset Parkway and Ignacio Boulevard are a mess in the morning and in the afternoon. I pity anyone forced to be anywhere near the school at drop-off and pick-up. I imagine that mythical "someone" is expecting it to ease up in some large measure as people hit their groove on how their kid gets from Point A to Point B and back in the coming weeks.

Here's the rub, though, "someone": those kids far away from the school really don't have any other options. There are no buses. Walking is not possible from that distance. Riding a bike is nearly as unfeasible as walking. Carpools for most of us are already in play; few new carpools can be formed.

"Someone," I realize you're in an awful position. I mean, it's not like you're the "someone" who closed Hill and created this logistical nightmare. Guess what? I didn't either. Yet here we are.

And you, dear "someone," need to get this fixed. Do you create an exit out of the Sunset Parkway parking lot at the school for those turning left back onto Sunset and have only those turning right leave from the existing exit? Do you move all the staff parking to the rear lot so you can create such a scenario? Do you have traffic control out there at least for the interim? Do you make it easier for the students to be dropped off at the top of Sunset, near Shon Drive and walk down, creating an entry way at the far end of the parking lot so they can go through it?

"Someone" had better do something. Hey, I know, maybe you can talk to "somebody" who is hoping to be re-elected in less than 10 weeks.

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