Your Kids Can Now Walk to School Alone Without You Getting Arrested
Article from Lifehacker-
You might have heard a few news stories recently of parents getting arrested because their children were walking to school alone or playing outside unsupervised. You can relax a little: A new federal law allows parents to choose whether your kids can roam free.
The new law is part of the recently-passed Every Student Succeeds Act (on page 858 of the 1,061-page document). It protects parents from civil or criminal charges for allowing their children to travel to or from school in whatever manner the parents believe are age appropriate.
This doesn’t overrule state or local laws, but it’s a step forward if you want to give your kids some freedom (even in a dangerous world). The law also only specifies walking to and from school, but hopefully one day maybe children will be able to go to the park on their own also if you give them permission to.
Federal Law Now Says Kids Can Walk to School Alone | Fast Company via Slashdot
Joey writes-
It’s such a different world now than when we grew up. On my way to dropping off my girls to school I often see this young girl (guessing 7 years old) walking alone to school without her parents and it always seems a little strange to me in this day and age. But then I was thinking about it and we always walked to the bus stop alone or we would ride our bikes to practices or were dropped off and picked up at practices. Nowadays most parents stay at practices and either drop off their kids at school, walk to the bus stop with them or sit in the car with them til they get picked up by the bus.
I’m not saying one way is right or wrong, just pointing out that not too long ago it wouldn’t have ever been considered that a parent be arrested for letting their kid walk to school.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Joey,
You hit the key this day and age your last paragraph…We never locked our doors either only at night never had anything taken…
Dave…
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There’s a lot of things we used to do which would be under the microscope now–like being outside all day from morning ’til night without supervision, literally biking miles away from home and the adventure of finding our way home, hanging out at our neighbors’ houses even when there were no kids there, exploring swamps and woods near us for hours with no supervision, lighting off mini rockets in the backyard (can’t remember what they were called, and not sure if our parents knew we did that), boating and swimming alone in a pond with no parents or lifeguard, the list goes on. I can’t either whether most of those things were “right or wrong” (ok, lighting off the mini-rockets was probably wrong 🙂 but I do know two things: I miss that early sense of adventure and exploration AND the world today is more dangerous. I would not feel comfortable letting a seven year old walk to school by herself even though I did it myself. Today many kids only have independent adventures and exploration on the internet–where there is plenty of danger and parental supervision is needed too! (I think this is the longest comment I ever wrote on here…)
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