If you look at a schedule of sunrise and sunset, there is no reasonable hour for school kids to walk in the daylight year-round. So your choice is to either let them walk in the dark in winter; not let them walk at all; change school hours seasonally; or change all hours seasonally.
It’s not clear that daylight savings is the least reasonable solution. And there is no fundamental reason to me that the time has to be the same in two different states. Wanting to live with the hobgoblin of consistency does not make your plan correct.
As a 90s kid, reading this caused me to wonder "How many kids actually walk to school anymore? I've almost never seen it in the US." Seems like it might be around 10%:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551...
I don't understand what you're trying to say.
The northernmost tip of the continental US gets about 8 hours of daylight during winter solstice. School is normally about 6.5 hours, so it's possible to give kids at least 45 minutes of daylight on either end of school any day of the year. Obviously not possible in Alaska, but possible in the other 49.
If you insist on your time zones being an hour wide, that makes it 15/75 and 75/15 on the edges. 15 minutes isn't a lot of time to walk to/from school, but that's only the week of winter solstice which is often during Christmas break anyways. Every week away from solstice adds about 15 minutes.