I avoid school property caches all together....hiding and finding. A few years back it was common practice to hide caches on school grounds and even worse playground equipment. This extends to playground equipment in public parks. Early on I realized that I was being scrutinized by some watchful mom and didn't feel comfortable. One time I cached in a group and the female in it went to the equipment without anyone batting an eye....that sealed the deal for me....scruffy guys stay away. Now the only time I see a cache like that is when a Newbie places it....some with 1 to 5 hides have done it. I don't want to blast a well intended new cacher but I gently try to log the issue, hopefully they will remove it and/or other cachers get a heads up. I am in favor of cachers having 50 or more finds so that they get a better feel of what is appropriate and what is a quality cache before they are allowed to hide a cache. This takes care of another problem. I see lots of caches where Newbies find their first caches and hide one on their first cache outing and then never cache again and for some reason it becomes a maintenance issue. I have started putting "Needs Archived" logs on them when I see that they haven't even logged into Groundspeak in 6 months or more and there are bunches of DNFs and "Needs Maintenance" logs.... but I digress!!!!!
There are parks that share or are adjacent to school grounds and some are only open to the public outside of school hours. I can see hides along a hike/bike trail and in remote areas of these but it requires some common sense interpretation of the guidelines. Depending on common sense is wishful thinking so stay away from schools. Also the smaller the muggle the better chance of them finding the hide, those little guy crawl around everywhere!!!!!

I have to say, if I saw someone like me hanging around a school I would have concern. Why in the heck is a guy like me going into the parking lot of a school? Don't I have to check in with the school office to be there? I have only done one cache on school property but from this point on I won't be.

JMCz wrote: I may have been a little slower than most, but my first hide published on the same day that I collected find #600.