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Tardy after-school care and a free ride

Last week, we brought up the conundrum of CIO Junior, our newly minted middle-schooler, being turned out onto the streets at 2:15 in the afternoon. Unlike elementary schools, middle schools, for you nonparental types, do not offer after-school care. Hence, our conundrum -- until we discovered a loophole. Kids who are tardy -- that is, those who don't make it before the opening rooster -- are given a two-hour detention. Hence, free after-school care. This prompted Leslie in Raleigh to write:

"I also have children in middle school (two) and found your comments about after school detention amusing."

Thanks. We felt pretty smart.

"However true it may be (that you get an extra two hours to yourself)," adds Leslie, "the teachers are usually the ones who pay when our lovely children are tardy for class a couple of times."

Well ...

"The teachers give up two hours of their time, and I doubt if they get paid for it."

... dang. Now we don't feel so smart.

"By the way," she notes, "I condone the punishment, but I also do not think being tardy automatically means being bad. Those middle schools are quite large."

We suspect that sprinting between classes takes up the slack for reduced gym time ... and, we might add, after-school sports, which might help with our initial problem.

"What I do not think is amusing ..."

Uh, oh. You were already sounding unamused.

" ... is that I found out recently that a friend of mine has a side job of driving kids to and from school when they get kicked off of the bus for bad behavior. These kids (and their parents, for that matter) are getting rewarded for their bad behavior by having someone drive up to their front doors and give them a free car ride to school."

Really? You mean we could swing after-school detention AND a free ride to school? No more driving bleary-eyed through pre-morning traffic? All for having a "bad" kid?

And there Junior is, diligently finishing up his homework. Gotta go put a stop to that!