@simgirl542 I've seen sims get to school, then turn around and go home (or perhaps play on the playground) when they can't get in the building. It's probably like any other situation where the route fails or the object is blocked—the action gets cancelled, and the sim is free to do something else. Most sims standing around town with nothing in their action queues will autonomously go home sooner or later unless there's an attractive sim or object (like a dumpster, unfortunately) nearby.
As far as the scolding goes, I've been using nraas DebugEnabler (thanks to igazor's suggestion) to wipe otherwise non cancellable actions from my sims' queues. I'd think it would work here too (maybe it would need to be applied to the kids as well as the adult), and it doesn't reset the sim the way MC or even the cheat console would. The sim stays in place or at the most hops a square or two to the side.