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Comment by _AzMoo | Hacker News Reader

My step-daughter's school library is open until 5pm and she goes there every day after school to do her homework. Do other schools not offer this?

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How does she get home at 5pm? Does the school offer a bus service at that hour?

Most neighborhood schools in non-rural districts don't offer school bus transport outside of special circumstances in the first place...

Well that's the point. The library being open until 5pm is great and dandy if the kids have a way to get home, but for a lot of families, it's school bus or bust.

Lessons finished at ~4:30pm when I was in school, it's the same pretty much everywhere in France and I would assume this isn't the only country like that. I'm not shocked at the idea of getting home at 5pm (we had no school bus service, just the regular public transportation which works well here)

American high schools start at ~0730, though that's gradually being moved back, and classes end around 1400-1500. So he library being open that late is meaningful.

And as bizarre as this might sound, outside of New York City, unaccompanied children on public transportation is basically not a thing in America. We assume the children are lost / abandoned and the parents are delinquent / trying to get the kid kidnapped by a pedo.

There was a decently widespread news story a few years ago about someone calling the police on a mother because she let her kids go to the park by themselves.

I pick her up, but there's also plenty of public transport available for her to take, which is what she does when she's with her father.

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