EDIT: since apparently a bunch of people woke up with the wrong foot this morning or forgot to check the group they’re in:
This is a joke. Do not steal or vandalize speed enforcement cameras (or anything else for that matter). That’s against the law and you will likely get arrested.
If you’re addicted to crack or any other drugs, please seek professional help.
Let me look at a map… maybe 1km max anywhere in my 30k town to the next primary school and that’s when you’re living on the very very edge of town. Should be under 500m for most pupils.
If you’re living in a rural area, outside of the next village (which will have a school), which is an absolute exception as things tend to cluster into villages in rural areas, it might be 5km. Not really an issue with a bike, I biked what 3.5km to Kindergarten (together with my mom). If you have less density than that you probably should have boarding schools.
For secondary education, if you’re living in a village you’ll probably have to take the bus to the nearest city. Regular public transport though the schedule will take school times into account. Yes, kids can walk 500m to the nearest station.
Bonus: All that school density – smaller but way more of them – means that there’s obvious places to hold elections as there’s a municipality-owned place in Sunday stroll distance to pretty much everywhere. The only downside are the ludicrously low tables.
Above you wondered why we need buses and I said that when I was 6 I lived 15 miles (24 km) from my school (and it was suburban, not rural). You then said that your school was 3.5 km away. I don’t see how that answers my question.
US suburbia has a higher density than the German countryside, having to travel 24km is nuts. That’d be defensible if you live in a tiny settlement 24km from a place with more than two dozen houses – I’m sure those exist in the US but suburbia isn’t that.
How many pupils were there at your school? My state has 106240 pupils in 393 primary schools, that’s an average of 270. Minimum size under ordinary circumstances is 80, the smallest is on Nordstrandischmoor: An island, 18 inhabitants, five families, one school, one teacher, two students, here it is. That’s because we don’t do boarding in primary education so there’s a maximum tolerable commute time/distance, once those kids are old enough they’ll spend Monday through Friday on the mainland.
If your system insists that a school have at least 2k students or such then, yes, of course, walking to school will be an impossibility for most. Fix your school sizes and like 99% of students will be able to walk or bike, use buses or minivans or whatnot for the rest we do that too (not really possible in Nordstrandischmoor, thing doesn’t even have a ferry but a rail link that’s only usable when the tide is low).
And no it wasn’t my school it was my Kindergarten, which wasn’t, by a long shot, the closest to home it was the one my parents chose. I mentioned it to say that biking 3.5km is something a 4yold can do, physically, without any issue at all really.