<p>For parents whose kids board a good distance from home, how is your family handling driver's ed, driver's licenses, etc? I wonder about having a kid to learn to drive, then not drive at all most of the year due to being away. Not only would insurance be costly, but it seems the new driver would not have a chance to keep the newly acquired driving skills fresh. A new driver with rusty skills seems enough to keep this parent up at night! How do you all manage?</p>
<p>…I tout the benefits of urban living ;-)</p>
<p>Seriously, I also would like to know. From what I recall during some of our visits, some BS do offer driver’s ed (even though they don’t allow boarders to drive or keep cars at school). But since different states’ permitting and licensing ages vary, I, too, am curious to hear about the logistics.</p>
<p>First of all: google “teen drivers license <em>STATE</em>” with your state. Rules vary widely from state to state, so the first thing to check is what your state requires. </p>
<p>For what it’s worth - here’s what the process is in CO. (Our son just turned 15, and is in school in CA.)</p>
<p>In CO, teens can get a driving permit at age 15, but must complete a 30-hour drivers education course first. The course can be in a classroom, or online, or an at-home study using DVDs and a workbook. There are several driving schools in our area that offer these services, and our son is going to do the at-home study (he took the DVDs back to school with him after Thanksgiving break, and will [hopefully!] get a start on them, and will finish up at home during winter break, with the plan to get his permit while he’s home in December). One option was to do a five-day-in-a-row, 6 hour a day class while he was home for winter break - but he didn’t want to spend his break in a classroom, so opted for the self-study DVDs.</p>
<p>After finishing the DVDs and accompanying workbook, he’ll go to the office of the local company, have them grade/sign-off his workbook, and he can then go to the local Drivers License Bureau to get his permit. He’ll have to take the written drivers test at the Bureau that day.</p>
<p>Once he has the permit, he has to wait a minimum of one year (and a maximum of three) to get his drivers license. CO also requires him to complete six hours of “behind the wheel” driving instruction with a certified drivers education company. He’ll most likely do that over Spring Break, in three sessions, two-hours per session. CO also requires him to keep a log, and have a minimum of 50 hours of supervised driving, signed off by a parent/guardian, before getting his license.</p>
<p>Hopefully, he’ll get a lot of time “behind the wheel” while he’s home for the summer, and then can get his drivers license NEXT December, after the one-year permit period is up.</p>
<p>Our daughter is older, and got her license last year when she turned 16. (She lived at home then, and opted for a six-hour day of class, five Sundays in a row.) She is also now at boarding school, and does not have a car or an opportunity to drive. When she was home for Thanksgiving, she drove quite a bit, and had not seemed to lose any of her skill.</p>
<p>One thing to note - be sure and check with your insurance company if they have an “away at school” rating. We have State Farm, and our premiums did not change while our daughter had her permit. Once she turned 16, and received her “official” license, the insurance premium for the car she was rated on did go up. When she left for school in September, State Farm changed the rating to “away at school,” and the rates went down quite a bit, since she wasn’t driving on a regular basis. </p>
<p>I can’t stress enough though - check the rules for your own state, and your own insurance company.</p>
<p>Thanks, MH. Our state also starts the permit process at 15, but dd’s school’s state is 16 or 16 1/2, I think. Thanks also for the “Away at School” tip!</p>
<p>I have a 17 year old who got her DL over the summer. It was tough for her to be the only one in her group of friends at home who still needed her parents to drive her places. We wont let her be a passenger in any of her young friends cars so we made the leap to let her drive. We spread the process out a bit. First by driving with her during her 16th summer and she eventually got the official DL the following spring. In our state the student needs to take a 5 hour course and have a a certain amount of hours before they get the reg DL.</p>
<p>I think SAS offers a drivers ed course…don’t know if it’s done through the school or outsourced. </p>
<p>As 7Daughter is on the young side for her grade, I think we might wait until she’s home the summer of junior year and get her some private lessons with the local outfit that all the families in our area use. That said, I am worried that that summer will be tight in terms of college search/internship sort of activities. My friend who went to Exeter was an utter terror on the college road trips we did together…his inexperience showed.</p>
<p>Until then, I will continue to offer both of my daughters time at the wheel of our UTV.</p>
<p>Permit while home last year. Drove more than the requisite hours including highway over the summer. She’ll take the test over Winter or Spring Break.</p>
<p>Taft offers a course through an outside service. Students qualify for a CT license. But it was expensive and not really necessary for us. So we skipped it.</p>
<p>I took the OP’s concern to be more related to BS kids’ readiness for the road given their eratic experience than concern for state laws or driver training programs. That’s our concern anyway. DS got his permit this past summer, but we will not let him test/get DL until WE’RE convinced he’s ready to drive on his own – and that could be decades! Seriously, until we feel he’s sufficiently capable and comfortable behind the wheel (and we’re letting him drive every time we need to back the car out of the garage), he will continue to drive under permit conditions. He understands this; it’s not negotiable.</p>
<p>Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts. Yes, ChoatieMom, we are concerned more with the fact that even once one gets past all the local requirements for attaining a license, a boarding school kid is still unlikely to be driving, on a day to day basis as I was back in the day, for quite some time. Given that our crazy local drivers make driving “interesting” even for this aged parent, it makes me shudder how a kid who drives perhaps 2 months out of 12 is going to manage. Still, it is one of those ‘rites of passage’ that we don’t want to mismanage.</p>
<p>What worked for us was letting dc get the permit as early as possible, then spending lots of time driving on breaks. It wasn’t until two years into the permit that my kid really started itching to get his license; given the way vacations fell, it just didn’t matter that much until then because he was always home on relatively short breaks and spending most of his time driving with one of us anyway. He did the DVD drivers ed training as well (had to do that to get the permit), then squeezed the drivers training in here and there. He’ll be getting his license soon, about 18 months later than he could have, and he’s an excellent driver at this point.</p>
<p>I do like the idea of getting a permit, and then allowing a good chunk of time go by before getting the license. Especially glad to see that at least one parent here has found their insurance has an ‘away at school’ option, and even better, that insurance rates do not go up during the time the student has a learner’s permit. Have other parents here found the same thing? We don’t have State Farm, and I don’t know if all insurance companies are as generous. I’ve been meaning to do an insurance review anyway, so this might be an opportune time.</p>
<p>No rate increase for us while our son has had his permit–and we don’t have State Farm–I suspect the state would affect this more than the insurance company. The “Away at school” clause though probably varies from company to company.</p>
<p>Current student here! First off, I believe that the majority of schools have some type of drivers ed/license program arrangement, as driving is a big part of teens lives. Insurance wise, I know that our insurance company gives us discount on myself and my older brother, because they know we are at school the majority of the year,a nd can’t drive. Not sure how other companies do it though.</p>
<p>Our daughter was able to finish driver’s ed and get her license right before she left for school. Our son, if he goes away, will have to use the summer for driver’s ed or wait until he is 18 to test.</p>
<p>The biggest benefits of D having her license is that when she is home, she can go visit her friends on her time and schedule. She need not wait for a ride from us and we need not head to her old high school at 10pm to pick her up from a football game!
But having the license also means that she DOES go see friends a good bit and not only does that mean we lose visitation time at home, but I don’t even get the time in the car with her on the way to and from friends’ homes. So, it is a double edged sword!</p>
<p>We pay full insurance…no ‘away’ clause that I know of. </p>
<p>She does like having the license at school for ID for plane and train rides…and just to know that the hurdle of getting her license is behind her! She has friends already complaining that this summer they have to limit job and internship opportunities if they live at home because they don’t have their licenses yet.</p>
<p>T</p>