Published Sept. 3|Updated Sept. 3
The no-left-turn rule kicks in at 6:55 a.m. at Robinson Elementary School in Plant City.
For parents living south of the school on the outskirts of Plant City, the rule is an inconvenience.
It means driving miles out of your way so you can make a right turn; or passing the school and making a U-turn that can land you in a ditch. Or you can go rogue by running down the orange cones in the center of the road to make the forbidden left.
For Matthew Taylor, the rule is more than an inconvenience; it’s an outrage. It touched off a chain of angry calls and letters last school year that went as far as the governor’s office. It brought armed officers to his house to deliver a warning letter from the school.
Parents everywhere contend with car lines, a twice-daily ritual that can bracket an otherwise idyllic school day. Staffers overseeing the traffic rail about parental aggression and disrespect. Former teacher Jonathon Bock said he can name multiple motorists who put him in physical danger; including a pickup driver who insulted his car instead of apologizing, “and then sped off — only to nearly hit another teacher trying to cross the lot.”
People insist their car lines are the worst anywhere.
“That’s a hill I’ll die on,” said a Facebook comment from parent Jamie Newman at Plant City’s Springhead Elementary, in response to a friend’s post about parents who were driving onto lawns and cutting other people off.
School officials maintain the majority of parents navigate the protocols just fine, and that it just takes patience and good sense.
But the way Taylor sees it, the whole system is broken, with no hope in sight.
Time was, kids walked or biked
Generations ago, children typically lived within a mile or two of their schools. Most often they walked or rode their bicycles. A 1981 book about child development milestones included this question in a checklist for first graders: “Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?”
Those years gave way to suburban sprawl and car culture. Parents, fearing the crime they saw on a new invention called cable news, didn’t want their kids walking unsupervised.
Public health experts sounded alarms about childhood obesity. But walking and biking became exceptions. A study in 2019 by the Federal Highway Administration showed 54.2% of the nation’s children were driven to school in private vehicles. That’s more than four times the percentage reported in 1969.
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Explore all your optionsIt doesn’t help, in the Tampa Bay area, that the region’s pedestrian fatality numbers are among the highest in the nation. Now add school choice to the mix. In Hillsborough last year, 45,000 students were at schools other than those assigned to them by address.
Universal bus transportation would ease some of the burden. But, with state funding limited, buses generally are not available within two miles of a school. And drivers are in short supply, which means they do double runs and students arrive late, giving parents yet another reason to brave the car line.
The Tampa Bay Times invited readers to share their experiences in its Facebook page for education news. Teachers described being cursed at and flipped off just for motioning to drivers to keep the line moving. They described marijuana smoke wafting from the open car doors, or sometimes a rat. A “F--- Biden” bumper sticker car gave one teacher pause.
Teachers wondered how parents can be in such a hurry that they drop their children off in the road, forcing them to dodge countless moving vehicles as they scurry toward the school doors.
At Roosevelt Elementary School in South Tampa. an argument ensued when a parent stopped at a street corner to drop off her child instead of using the car line. Another parent got so frustrated with what he considered unsafe driving that he pounded the car with his hand as it was leaving, and the driver called Tampa Police. The parent who had smacked the car wound up paying for repairs, wrote a letter of apology and attended an eight-hour anger management class.
Car line decorum is no better in other states. In North East, a small town just outside Eerie, Pennsylvania. an argument between a parent and a school superintendent over car line behavior escalated into a federal lawsuit. The parent accused the superintendent of trying to humiliate and intimidate her.
“Resources are limited, parents are frustrated, idling cars are polluting the air, and neighbors are annoyed that they can’t even pull out of their driveways with all the congestion,” says an ad for Carline Hound, a business that, through a $299-a-year app, helps schools control the traffic flow.
A Pinellas reader sent three videos to the Times showing parents parking in a residential neighborhood so their children could walk the rest of the way to Madeira Beach Fundamental K-8 school.
This behavior is occurring in spite of detailed instructions that the school provides in an eight-minute video on its website, detailing the airport-like arrangement of red and blue car loops for older and younger grades.
“It’s the most beautiful view in Pinellas County,” Madeira Beach Principal Chris Ateek says as he narrates the footage of school traffic against the scenic backdrop of Madeira’s waterways.
Two lanes, no left turn
Taylor’s story in Plant City, while extreme, illustrates the levels of dysfunction that characterize the way we deliver children to school.
Robinson Elementary, which his child attends, traces its history to 1928, when schools in the area ran on a special schedule so students could help their parents harvest winter strawberries. They were known as “strawberry schools.”
Located on Turkey Creek Road, it was built in 1961 and expanded over the years. The road remained just two lanes wide as surrounding communities such as Valrico and Plant City experienced robust growth.
Other parents accept the congestion and rules with grim resignation. But Taylor took a stand. According to emails provided by the school district, Taylor went back and forth between county commissioners and school board members in his search for answers. In the past year, district officials say, they have worked with the county to extend the area where parents line up to make the right turn. Conditions have improved, they said.
Taylor, nevertheless, posted scary footage of the traffic on YouTube. At one point, he was caught making the left turn. For reasons not clear from the records, the principal arranged for two district security officers to visit his house to deliver a warning letter.
“They came in like they owned the place,” Taylor said. Their standard uniform includes firearms, and Taylor noted that fact when he appeared before the School Board on Feb. 6 to complain. Robinson’s principal did not respond to an email about the incident.
Taylor’s wife Season shared footage from a home security camera of her conversation with the district officers. They can be heard sympathizing with the couple, and suggesting that the school or county hire crossing guards.
While the school district builds schools and establishes attendance boundaries, issues of traffic control and road maintenance lie entirely with the county, according to Kenneth Hart, a senior district official who became Taylor’s point of contact about the incident.
School officials explored ways to reroute the Robinson car line, Hart wrote in an email to Taylor. But, because of limited space and a dead-end street, everything they considered was problematic.
Taylor’s options, therefore, were to drive a longer route involving three streets that would take him north of the school; or to arrive at the school before 6:55 a.m., when the no-left rule kicks in. He would have to sit in the car with his children until school staff arrived. Or he could just move his child to another school.
Taylor said he isn’t doing any such thing. Since the family lives three miles from the school and they are eligible for transportation, he said, “I’m going to wait on the bus.”
He is also running for a seat on the county commission.