Just outside the no-parking zone, the mother found a parking space in front of the elementary school. The family carriage stops, two doors open, one in the back, one in the front. The son saddles the satchel, the mother kisses him on the hair, and just as she is about to get back into the car, a father comes back from the school grounds. Obviously, he has just delivered his own child. Walk. The woman begins, slightly hectic, with an explanatory lecture on the topic: Why I drove Finn today. The father smiles mildly and gives absolution: "You always run so exemplary."

Florentine Fritzen

Correspondent in the Hochtaunuskreis

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The parents' taxi is frowned upon. Everyone knows this, because schools are constantly reminding us of this. This is the case everywhere, but in the densely populated Taunus, where many families tend to drive large cars and like to drop their children off at school on their way to work in Frankfurt, mothers and fathers may hear the reminders even more often.

Martin Peppler, the head of the Altkönig School in Kronberg, always writes an appeal in his regular parent information when he thinks again: "Today was really bad." Then several parents drove into the school parking lot, although this is forbidden, and especially many snaked from both directions through the narrow street in front of the comprehensive school, through which buses also pass. "It would be nice if they let the children out 200 meters away," says the educator.

Of course, not all 1500 students are brought by car. The bike racks are also full, some come by bus, others, like the headmaster himself, by S-Bahn. But Kronberg has steep streets, and when the satchel is particularly full or it rains or the family is tight, the parents' taxi rolls off.

Vain appeals

That's the problem: everyone has good reasons. And so the queues of cars at walking pace in front of many schools are part of everyday life. Especially in the morning. Just like on a day at the beginning of this week in front of a state high school, also in the Taunus. There is a municipal car park opposite. It's full, but quite a few parents stop between the parked cars to let their children get out. Open the trunk, grab your backpack, "Okay, bye!", close the flap. The car turns, other parents are waiting at the wheel, slowly roll back to the road. There is stop-and-go at the zebra crossings. Not just to let children cross the street. But also because the forced stop is also suitable for getting out. Others drive to the curb for it.

For many, the parent taxis are more routine than a nuisance. In any case, if you ask young people how bad the situation is at their school, you won't hear any horror stories. Primary school pupils conscientiously report on the usual activities at many schools: For each way to school on foot, by bike or scooter, the class receives one point. And the winning class at the end received a baby shoe painted with gold paint as a trophy. This must be defended in the next action. In between, at least according to the observation of parents, they drive again. Not every day and often with a guilty conscience. But often the car is the emergency solution in everyday stress.

Havva Sanli also reports on this. The working mother of three is chairwoman of the parents' council in the Hochtaunus district. She calls the topic of how children get to and from school a perennial issue of parent work – she hears about the problems with it from almost all schools in the district. While safety is in the foreground for primary school children, it is often a matter of the elderly that buses and trains are not punctual or that there is no connection that just fits. Sanli knows this from her own experience: she regularly has to take her daughter to high school spontaneously because lessons are cancelled. Or a train.