Jesus, dude, where was this? I graduated in 1999 from a school with nearly 3,000 students and it didn't even take me five minutes to walk to the school from my house, let alone to cross the campus. It was an average of maybe 40 seconds from classroom to the lunch area, depending on which class you had immediately before. If it was band, you lucked out and were right next to the cafeteria, though we also had separate outdoor food sellers and I never personally ate at the cafeteria and there weren't too many lines because there were so many options. Once senior year came and we could leave campus, there were three different walk-up Mexican lunch counters within four blocks of the school and it didn't take 10 minutes to get to one of those, either, and we were across the street from a grocery store. I lucked out senior year because my day ended with three consecutive periods of art and the art building was the one right next to the gate to the parking lot.
Credit California for at least that one thing. The open air campuses with hacienda style layouts were really easy to get around. Contrary to European imaginations in which all of the US is Frisco, TX, even in a Los Angeles suburb I could also walk pretty much everywhere as a kid and the weather was kind enough most of the time to even make it pleasant.
Small town of only 30k people, but the school district kept absorbing other districts. Some kids (me included) had 2-3 hour bus rides to school. Some days if I missed the bus, I would have to walk, but the walk was only 30-45 minutes depending on if I stopped at a friends house or not.
Credit California for at least that one thing. The open air campuses with hacienda style layouts were really easy to get around. Contrary to European imaginations in which all of the US is Frisco, TX, even in a Los Angeles suburb I could also walk pretty much everywhere as a kid and the weather was kind enough most of the time to even make it pleasant.