ok elementary people, I need ideas. How does your school handle dismissal? Where do kids go for the buses, where do car riders and walkers go, how are they released building-wide? My elementary school is huge — 700+ kids — and dismissal is a disaster every day of every year. I’ve been here four years and the only thing that has gotten better is how car riders are dismissed. The rest is a mess. If y’all could share in detail what your school does, I’d appreciate it. I was the pbis person last year so maybe my principal will listen to some ideas if they are mapped out, but I’m drawing a blank on how to make this better than it is now.
So I'm at a middle school so the kids are a bit older, but I'll be happy to tell how we do it. We dismiss walkers/bike riders first — on the opposite side from cars/busses. We usually have teachers out there, but walkers/bikers assemble near my office which is directly on that side. There's a main halfway that goes the length of the school from my office all the way to the cafeteria (this is the most efficient way for me to get to the cafeteria — all the way down and hang a left). Then once they're gone, we dismiss bus riders. Last year, we had to share busses with the high school so we didn't have the luxury of doing both bus and car riders. However as the bus situation has been remedied, we could potentially bring the car riders up early but we've opted to keep them separate to prevent the chaos. Then finally we dismiss car riders. Car pickups use the same driveway as busses. So keeping them separate we're only dealing with one group of students at a time outside. In all three cases, students line up in the hallways with their teams — students are divided based on their home room (more or less). It's for scheduling purposes and we're trying to split the difference between high school and elementary school. At the high school level, their classes are independent and based on their schedules. In the elementary level it's all team based and they have the same students in every class. So for us, while they change classrooms, they're still roughly grouped by teams. Think Hogworts style: teams attend classes together but they might not have all of the same class at one time. So for instance if you're on the blue team, and your team is paired with red team, you're going to have classes with red team, but the entire blue team doesn't all take math at once.
I’m in a large elementary school as well. We have a super structured dismissal that goes pretty flawlessly. We’re also PBIS and we practice arrival/dismissal multiple times each quarter and do re-teaches after long breaks. Walkers are dismissed first and all walkers (k-5) go to the same door to leave. A staff member stands at that door with a clipboard and checks off students as they go. Bus riders are dismissed 2 buses at a time. 1 staff member gets the primary hallway and 1 staff gets intermediate. We have silent dismissal and students have to be on a level 0 as they walk out. Car riders dismiss from the cafeteria. Students have car rider numbers and sit at assigned tables based on their numbers. As cars pull up to the sidewalk, staff use a walkie to call the numbers and staff inside the cafeteria send them out. The after school program is dismissed last and they go to the gym.
This sounds somewhat similar to what we are trying to do (except car riders and walkers dismiss at the same time for all grade levels and it's a hot mess). Do bus riders dismiss from their classrooms? How does one person keep track of that many kids leaving for walkers? Even dismissing just K-2 would be 350+ kids, and we have a lot of kids who try to leave with friends when they shouldn't and parents get very upset. We lost several kids today and it was honestly a fiasco. I'm curious about what kind of supervision is happening in the hallways while kids are walking and how walkers are monitored beyond being checked off as they leave.
School bus and day care bus riders are dismissed to the bus area 5 minutes before the bell. Each bus has an assigned area and students are dismissed through the front door as the bus pulls up. Those on bus duty check off the students as they load the bus. Car riders and walkers are dismissed from the grade door. At my school each grade has an assigned door for entrance and exit unless they're late. Car riders stand with their teacher until they parents pull up in the car line. Kindergarten students are a little different. The kindergarten TA walks the bus and day care bus riders to the bus area and car riders and walkers sit in the hall and wait for pickup. The teacher on duty in the car line call students by walkie talkie when their ride comes. Those who walk are pickup at the door by a parent or older sibling. Pre-K and functional skills students are signed out at their classroom door. Those student who are still with the teacher at the end of contract time are walked to the office. The secretary calls late parents and admin waits with them for pickup.
I taught at an enormous school in the past. We had team teaching partners. One of us took the bus riders to the front of the school and walked kids to their buses. The kids were grouped in line according to the bus they rode. The other took the walkers and pick ups to a different door. They dismissed the walkers from that door. ( Away from the cars...) Then they stayed with the pick up students for a set amount of time. After that time was up, 1 person had duty there. We rotated duty days. It worked for us with a few exceptions. If we had checked off names like other posters have mentioned, the problems would not have happened.
1) Yes, bus riders dismiss from classrooms. They meet their assigned staff person in the hallway and then walk together in a quiet line to the bus. 2) We don’t have a ton of walkers, maybe 100-150. Most of our students are car or bus. We have 3 staff assigned to the walker door, but it’s usually down to one by the end of the year because they start to know all the students. If a student isn’t a walker, then they wouldn’t be allowed to leave their classroom. 3) As far as hallway supervision, most of our non-classroom staff (sped, admin, intervention, etc.) has an assigned location. Teachers are supposed to be in their doorways monitoring the hallways as well. Quiet dismissal also helps so it’s not a chaotic time. When the office announces that walkers may dismiss, those students are dismissed from their classrooms and walk straight to the walker door, then are checked off as they go. The front office prints rosters daily for everyone, so as you’re checking, you have a list of who is absent and who should be there.
I'm a sub (for many years) and to me dismissal is aways the most stressful part of the day (in elementary schools). Each school in our district seems to have slightly different dismissal procedures. Some of the differences have to do with the configuration of the building and the access outside. For example, at one school the parents can drive up to the building, and students are dismissed as the rides show up (the person picking up a student has an ID card on their dash, and the students are called out one by one as their ride shows up. This is (I think) the most regulated and best procedure. However, all schools do not have an area where the student rides can pull right up to the building. At a couple of the schools the person picking up the student is supposed to arrive, park their vehicle on the street, and walk up to the building to pick up their student. Sometimes the ride just parks, opens their window and the students sees or hears the person calling them. then the student is supposed to give the teacher a 'high 5' before walking to the vehicle. When I sub I ALWAYS tell the students that their person MUST come up to the building and pick them up. I am not familiar with all the parents/aunts/mamaws/papaws, etc. so I want to see the person, and I also rely on the teachers recognizing the person picking up the student. At some schools each student had a dismissal card with an ID on it that can be read by a scanner (like those that scan prices in stores), and the student MUST give the scanned card to the teacher on duty out in front of the school, when their ride shows up. This system is also used to be sure the students et on the correct busses. Sometimes it DOES look like chaos! I am ALWAYS very firm with the students that they MUST stand with me until I actually SEE their person. Still, dismissal is pretty scary for me.
