Kiss ‘n’ Ride is a volunteer-run program that promotes the safety of our kids and community while making it more convenient to drop your kids of at school in the morning.
It works like this: you drive up Castlefield from Avenue Road between 8:40 and 9:00am (we ask that you obey the parking regulations and not park between Avenue Road and the kindergarten yard on the school side of Castlefield during this time). You pull up to the area between the pylons where a parent volunteer opens the car door and can help your kid with all the various projects, swim bags, lunches and mittens. Your kid gives you a big loving kiss goodbye (if you are lucky enough that they still do that) while you remain in your driver’s seat. The kids are then accompanied by a volunteer to the top of the stairs of the yard if they are in the lower grades, and of course they can walk on their own if they are older. No advanced sign-up or thought required. Then off you go to your 8:15 meeting or to drop off your other kids somewhere else without ever having the need to park and get out of the car.
Some kids will tell us their life story and some prefer not to register that there is another human nearby; we respect both extremes as well as everyone in between. The point is to allow for a safe drop-off zone for kids and minimize congestion at the busiest time of day (it is more common than you would think for there to be gridlock…); there is no reason why every kid in grade 1-6 who drives to school could not use this program.