Organize A Car-Pool

Now that the school year is here, many parents will join up with a car-pool, or create a new group. Today we’ll be looking at car-pool basics, rules, and alternatives to the traditional car-pool.

If you’re considering organizing a car-pool, here are some tips:

Plan for diligent or casual: A diligent car-pool means parents pick up or drop off kids no matter what; even if their own kids are sick. Usually someone in this car-pool group has an official list created with dates and times. A casual car-pool is, well, casual. In casual car-pool groups I’ve seen, parents sometimes put planning off until the last minute.

You need to choose which car-pool group you’d like to organize, because folks interested in a casual car-pool don’t tend to mingle well with the diligent folks; people will only get frustrated.

Find other parents: You can gather a group of parents you already know, or hang a flyer up at your child’s school. If you hang a flyer, make sure you put location info on it. People need to know the areas they’ll be expected to drive in. If you’re feeling lazy about organizing, you can always look for an existing car-pool group and ask to join.

Make rules: Every car-pool group needs rules, even the casual groups. Hold a meeting one evening and have all parents attend. You’ll need to discuss sick days, safety rules, rules surrounding kid behavior while with another parent, and consequences for being late or absent. If you don’t make rules right off the bat, you’ll need to make them up as you go – which is a much harder task.

Next up; we’ll look at some rules your car-pool group might want to implement.

[image via stock.xchng]