As the year draws to a close we, the residents of Gloucester Avenue in Sandringham, breathe a collective sigh of relief.
We have spent the year – and many years before this – watching the pupils of Fairsand Primary School wreak havoc in our street. Every afternoon as the school bell rings, the pupils converge on the street, and there they stay for the remainder of the day, playing soccer in the street, mercilessly teasing our dogs, and when the need arises urinating on our boundary walls. When their lifts come to collect them, the children run alongside the taxis with the drivers hooting all the way down the road, until the vehicles come to a stop.
In contrast, Maryvale, HA Jack and Yeshiva College seem to have got it right. The pupils are safely ensconced behind a closed gate with an adult supervisor. When their lifts come to collect them they park their vehicles, alight and collect their charges from the school. An orderly in a luminous vest sees them across the road at a designated point.
Perhaps the powers that be at Fairsand Primary should stay a while after the school bell, and take the time to teach their charges the very valuable life lessons of discipline, decorum, safety, and never forgetting kindness to animals.
