JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for September 21, 2022

I love this strip (Ii’m currently in the process of resuming my binge of the older stuff from the start of the gocomics archive after having read most of the last 5 years for story reasons), but man Joe can be annoying sometimes. Bud.. you HAVE to know what happened next year. Even if the process is a LOT, I can’t blame schools for being extra cautious after a mass shooting. I do like however that the humor is ballanced: The percautions are comically exagerated, but Joe is also seen as a dummy for not seeming to get WHY this might have happened.

Do kids walk to school any more..?

What I admire about this strip is that it doesn’t rely on the cliches we see in most black media such as Ebonics, rapping, basketball and the characters acting loud and obnoxious. Robb Armstrong writes what he knows and he doesn’t know anybody who acts like that.

While in grad school my eldest sister asked me to pick up my nephew at pre-school. She had neglected to fill out the proper form (ca 1980), so they wouldn’t release him. Then they closed, but one person stuck around until my sister showed up. Handed her the form and told her to drop it off in the morning.

I’m surprised that she was able to lift all those forms!

and all the kid will know is that they’re being singled out as being a huge hassle. Not to mention the increased work load and hours this will pile on everyone involved because of the red tape and bureaucracy. How is this something that can’t be done in minutes with a phone call or email? A state ID and confirmation from the legal guardian should be enough for this kind of thing.

If “Big Otis” shows up,the new procedure will be immediately cancelled.

And when Trump was President,why do I think they never screened ANYBODY??

Nope, not how it works. The parents can name anyone they like to pick up their child during the school year. They can pick a grandparent, friend or neighbor. That person has to show ID before they release the child, but it is the parent’s choice who can pick up the kid. The form is filled out at the beginning of the school year.

I’d love it if we could bring back school buses again. The line out of my neighborhood of parents dropping off their kids in the morning is ridiculous. I pass by two other schools on the way to work, and I have to remember which intersections to get in the other lane before I get stuck in school traffic.

Parents remain amazed we won’t send their children off to different bus stops and/or hand them off to strangers. I tell them, “If you are who you claim to be, you would NOT want us to hand your children off to anonymous strangers based on an unverified phone call.”

Some appreciate it. Some just hang up and try to kidnap elsewhere.

It can forestall any kidnapping attempt.

Any elementary school does.

Our pediatric practice had the same kind of procedure for children to be brought in to be seen by anybody except a parent. Parents designated who could bring the child (full name and birthday, government iD).

This sounds so complicated. When I was in elementary school (back in the Dark Ages), my school was a fifteen-minute walk from my house. The kids who lived farther away took the yellow school bus. No parents were involved.