in march this year four and halfyearold ira mathew got an extra certificate along with her report card for being a conscientious carpooler she was among several of her school mates at lady andal school who were recognized for doing their bit for the environmentwe had a really good carpool going six children in the mornings mothers would take turns every week to drop the children it was easy on the parents and fun for the children and its nice that the school recognised the ones who made an effort says iras mother mansi gandhilocated in the hightraffic harrington road for a year now lady andal school has been trying to make a conscious effort to reduce pollution within the school as well as ease the traffic situation first we introduced a system where only those who carpooled were allowed to park inside the school says lady andal principal shalini pillay the car had to have three or more children in it she addsafter that the school finetuned the system and decided that carpooling students would be given a merit certificate recognising them for carpooling we widened that circle to also include children who brought their lunch from home we found that a lot of parents were making a second trip to school at lunch time just to give their children hot food now we award those who bring food from home in the morning itself says shalininow with the steep petrol prices and schools set to reopen soon parents are busy trying to get their carpools back in order mansi for instance says that this year since all the children from her daughters carpool have either left school or moved to higher classes where their timings have changed she will have to do all the pickups and drops this year but next year my daughters school timings will change too and i can get back into the carpool says mansifor anisha nanavati who carpooled to school as a child it was what she calls a natural progression with her two children especially considering they both start school halfanhour apart we have five children in the carpool says anisha who lives in kilpauk 13 kilometres away from sishya school where her children study i have two carpools going so i end up picking up and dropping the children only twice a week once for each i couldnt think of it any other way