It sounds like the opening line of a joke, “A father walked up to his kid’s school and gets arrested…” but watch the video of Jim Howe trying to pick up his kids from South Cumberland Elementary School in Cumberland County, Tennessee, and you’ll sooner cry than laugh. That’s because Howe’s alleged crime waswalking into the school building and asking to take his children now that classes were over. Howe was supposed to wait, you see. All walking parents are supposed to cool their heels until a long line of drivers have picked up their kids, and only then retrieve their own children. That’s because school authorities are convinced that making parents drive up to school for pick-up is somehow safer than allowing choice in the matter.
“Previously, parents were coming out to pick up children, they were just getting out of cars and coming to school,” Donald Andrews, the director of Cumberland County Schools told the Huffington Post. “In this day in age, the PTO [parent teacher organization] was concerned that it was a safety issue, someone could come up and grab [any] kid.”