Next Wednesday the students at Sacajawea Elementary will commute to school en masse as part of International Walk to School Month.
We’re sure it won’t look like this photo, taken in May as students in costume paraded as part of an arts festival. But it should be impressive.
Sacajawea is one of six elementary schools in the Seattle School District touting walking to school as a physical activity. They will have assistance from Feet First, a local non-profit organization experienced with developing Safe Routes to School programs.
“Walking school buses,” the district says, are “essentially groups of children and parents walking to school together.”
Sacajawea will have four such “buses,” with kids joining in along the way, followed by snacks in the school cafeteria.
Students will receive information on how to walk safely, and will also get a “blinky light” with the school name on it. In addition, the school will offer bike-to-school groups for students who want to ride their bicycles.
I agree that Sacajawea is the most oddly pedestrian-inaccessible school perhaps in King County. The roads around it are at steep angles, almost none of them have sidewalks (except to and from the bus stop at Lake City Way, which no students use), and the people who drive this sloped area of Maple Leaf are CRAZED. Drivers don’t observe the four-way stops at traffic circles, corners are surprisingly blind; and between driving teenagers, rushed commuters, late bus drivers, parents hurriedly dropping kids off, and raging FedEx and UPS and gardening trucks, I’m amazed anyone would dare walk to Sacajawea . . .
But I’m glad the parents are doing group walk: there is greater safety in numbers, that’s for sure. And simple walking is as close to a panacea for society’s health problems these days as there can be.
I remain confused why Sacajawea doesn’t have a robust sidewalk network in the neighborhood, however.
On one hand, this effort is to be applauded- ordinary walking is a basic exercise that has been literally been driven out of many lives. On the other hand, the school is surrounded by blocks of city streets that shamefully lack sidewalks sixty-odd years after incorporation into the city limits. Good for the school district for looking for ways to encourage kids to regularly exercise, it’s long past time for us as citizens to see to basic civic infrastructure. Walking is good for kids of all ages.