Parent volunteers Tammy Graham, left, and Mark Miller, right, wait at a bus stop with students on their way to Lawton Elementary in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. Lawton’s walking school bus started last year with one day a week and has moved to two days this year with five routes.
Tammy Graham, a walking school bus volunteer (left, in yellow vest), talks with fellow Lawton parent Natashia Trotman, right, as they and the bus walkers make their way to school.
Walking school bus parent volunteer Tammy Graham's yellow vest stands out as she and another parent, Natashia Trotman, guide students across a street en route to Lawton Elementary School.
Walking School Buses: Green, Cost-Conscious Parents Saying No to Gas-Guzzling
By Melanthia Peterman
Kara Trotman skips along the sidewalk, her multi-colored skirt flouncing about her black leggings and her hands tucked inside the pockets of her cotton-candy pink jacket to ward off the morning chill.
The 7-year-old drops back momentarily to join a group of children who have stopped to pick up a pine cone or two on their way to Lawton Elementary School in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood.
“I put a pine cone in my backpack so that way, after school, I can kick it when I walk home,” the little girl says as she rejoins her mother, Natashia Trotman.
Walking to and from school used be as routine as recess and report cards, but safety concerns, hectic mornings and evenings crammed with after-school activities seldom leave room for such childhood luxuries anymore.
Thanks to the Walking School Bus program, however, more children and their parents are again making that trek one, two and sometimes five days a week. It’s a grassroots initiative meant to change the transportation habits of families, especially children.
There are more than 60 public schools in Seattle with designated walking routes. Walking school buses have been staged elsewhere in King County and across the state, including in Island, Skagit, Pierce and Snohomish counties. Groups have formed in several other U.S. states, including Florida, New Jersey and Indiana. The idea has caught on internationally, as well, with “buses” organized around neighborhoods in Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Italy.
At Lawton, second-grade teacher and Magnolia resident Lyon Terry started researching walking school buses more than two years ago after noticing what seemed like way too many students being dropped off at school, even though they lived just blocks away.
“I realized there were a bazillion kids being driven to school all the time,” says Terry, who eventually connected with Seattle-based Feet First to organize several walking routes to the school.
Feet First is a nonprofit that promotes pedestrians’ rights and encourages walking in communities throughout Washington.
Lawton's fuel-free routes, as well as those for Catherine Blaine Middle School, also garnered help from CoolMom.org, an eco-friendly group of moms that helped highlight the walking programs enough to win a $13,000 grant from the city. That money helped to buy signs to mark walking school bus routes and reflective vests for volunteers that, like the signs, feature the program's symbol: the silhouettes of children on a red school bus with sneakered feet sticking out the bottom.
Kirsten McCaa, co-founder and director of CoolMom.org, says it's a worthwhile program to highlight in order to increase participation. “We want to give more children an opportunity to walk,” she says.
Cultivating interest in a walking school bus seems easy enough given Seattleites' love for outdoor activity. Mark Miller, a Lawton dad who supervises one of the five routes to the school, says the numbers are definitely up since they first started at Lawton in spring of 2006. Depending on weather, there are anywhere from a few to more than 20 students on the “bus” he escorts each Walking Wednesday and Fuel-Free Friday.
“This is really a walking neighborhood. That's not really common in America, I don't think,” Miller says, while directing a pack of 20 kids on the one-mile trek through crosswalks and up a couple of hills to school.
Miller, retired from the Coast Guard and now a self-described “house dad,” is an avid walker who hoofs it all over Magnolia. It's a habit he's passed on to his two sons.
“I like to walk to school everyday,” his 9-year-old son Aaron says. Dangling from his book bag is a ring of red, yellow and blue plastic buses – one for every 10 times the fourth grader has walked to school. “I like those to advertise how much I walk,” he says.
Besides the rewards, the benefits of walking are obvious, Miller says. “A little bit of activity instead of having your behind in the car all the time. It's just too easy to step out front and get in the family van to go three blocks.”
Nearly half of children ages 5 to 18 walked to school in 1969, according to Federal Highway Administration data. That number had dipped to just 15 percent by 2001 and seems to be holding steady, according to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 21 percent of morning traffic stems from parents schlepping their children to school, according to statistics cited in a July 2008 report by the National Safe Routes to School Task Force.
Before the walking school bus started at Lawton, at least 80 cars could be found parked and often idling in front of the school every morning. “That number is cut in half when the walking school bus is running,” Miller says.
Improving air quality, especially around the school, and reducing their carbon footprint is another benefit that attracts parents like Hilary Jebson, who is “trying to be a wee bit more environmentally friendly.”
One recent morning, Jebson walked part of the way with her 7-year-old daughter Mackenzie and 5-year-old son Peter. Several other mothers joined the brigade to provide some extra adult supervision.
“It's also good for the parents,” Jebson notes. “You see, there's a lot of moms that walk also, so it's a community-building thing.”
