If kids have to be released to their parents and are no longer turned out en masse like they used to be, that will absolutely cause traffic and could very well be the root cause of traffic that exceeds the designed capacity of the school pickup circles.

When I was growing up kids within a mile of the school would walk themselves to school and back home with very few exceptions, often starting with first graders. But even a half mile is a long enough distance that many busy parents in the suburbs would choose to drive it rather than walk it four times a day.

I’m across the street from a school and there is always one parent that parks in my condo building’s driveway and blocks it. It would be too much for them to be in the line!

Then sometimes, they leave their car and go in the school and we are trying to home or leave and they get angry with us!

Yeah, you can see a lot of creativity depending on what's available. Where I once lived in Houston, parents would park at a nearby strip center and huddle around the school exit. And then walk their kid across the 6-lane road (3 lanes in each direction) that Houston is obsessed with building back to where they parked their car.

This sort of thing drives me insane. The people on the polar extremes are (I suspect) part of why we can't have nice things. I've both lived by the school and been a parent, and I badly wish people would practice some empathy and common sense. For example there are some people that will literally sit outside during pickup hours on a lawn chair and yell at people for parking on the street in front of their house (which, btw, is completely legal and there's nowhere else to park within several miles of the school). I've also seen parents park right in front of driveways, blocking people's access to their homes, which is absolutely not ok. It kills me that we can't just have a simple compromise.

Parents: It's never ok to block somebody's driveway! Residents: It's not illegal for people to park on the street in front of your house (assuming they aren't blocking your access of course)

I live near a school. Soccer practice, parents routinely park up and down the street at the far end of the field where their kids are practicing, because the school car park at the other end of the field would be a good two minute walk away. "No parking this side" doesn't apply to soccer practice parking, either, apparently.

And if you want to just do a drive by pickup, sure, no worries, stop in the middle of the street (with cars either side), and have your kids younger sister hop out, leaving the car door open, and go wander down the slope to help her brother with his equipment and carry it back up the slope. No-one else is using the street or lives there, after all, so they can wait a few minutes. Bonus points if you get belligerent with them or flip them off for being "impatient".

If children can't leave without their parent, then they can't walk home, or bike, or take a bus.

That's a lame take from this. Kids/parents fill out forms that state the typical way the students arrive/depart the school. If they are on a bus route, those kids exit the school from a different exit (side/rear of building) so that the buses queuing up do not interfere with the car queue. Walkers typically exit yet a different set of doors.

The parents that arrive early but have kids that are not ready to be picked up is precisely why the queues get out of control. At least with this method the cars are moved along much faster. If a car arrives in the queue but the kiddo is not yet found, when the car reaches the front it is asked to move to a holding spot out of the queue--much like fast food places do when your order is going to hold up everyone else in line.

But it does cause it because every car needs to get checked off. When I was a kid in the 80s, there were still quite a few kids that got picked up, but no one was picking them up from the door. They'd park somewhere around the school within a block or two.

I dunno... I grew up in the 80s/90s and most of us took the bus or walked if we lived within a mile or so. A parent drop-off/pick-up was the exception - going to a doctor appointment after school or something.

My school said you must be at least 2 miles away before they would route buses for pickups. There were exceptions which my neighborhood qualified as there were no sidewalks, and we would have to cross a single lane bridge to cross a 50 foot creek with no pedestrian path. I lived in the boonies, and it was faster for me to cut through cow pastures in a straight line than walking the roads. We just had to make sure the rancher's bull was not going to notice us (or sneakily hang a red handkerchief on one of your buddies' backpack).

And the vehicles are limited by the roads that are available to line up on.

And the roads are limited by the school's ability to acquire land.

And no reasonable school is ever going to set aside any more land for a car line than is absolutely necessary that could otherwise be used to provide more school building/field.