Not every kind of school bus requires a commercial license to get behind the wheel. In fact, not every school bus has a wheel to get behind. That’s the unorthodox idea behind the aptly named Walking School Bus which will embark from Lumpkin County Middle School this Friday afternoon as part of the school system’s first ever Georgia Safe Routes to School event.
“Our goal is to bring awareness to the feasibility of walking and biking to and from the school,” said LCMS Principal Libbie Armstrong on Monday. “And of course to look at the conditions of our sidewalks and our walking paths.”
The Walking School Bus consists of a group of students, led by teachers and volunteers, who opt to bypass the big yellow bus and the carpool line and instead walk (or roll) from campus to their homes or a designated pick-up spot.
After the bell rings on Friday two Walking School Buses will form in the top parking lot of LCMS.
“We have three stops on the walk,” said Armstrong. “The group that is going with [sixth grade teacher] Samantha [Fuerstenberg] down Skyline and the rest will go towards town . . . either to App Studios or to the square.”
Middle schoolers don’t have to live along the walking route to participate. And they don’t necessarily have to be middle schoolers either.
“We are also encouraging high school students,” said Armstrong. “If we have any high schoolers that want to join they would ride the bus over to the middle school and they would be released from the bus and they would join us on the walk.”
Details on how to participate have been sent to middle school parents through the weekly Tribe Vibe newsletter with a follow-up robo-call planned for later this week.
FUN WALK
Though this is a first for Lumpkin County, Walking School buses are a regular occurrence for Nick Anderson, who serves as the school program coordinator with Georgia Safe Routes to School, a GDOT-funded program.
“We help schools figure out how to make it safer for kids to walk and bike to school throughout a variety of ways,” he said.
Anderson, who will help lead a group on Friday, said the idea of the event is to let kids know there’s more than one way to get home.
“We have an event where we can kind of demonstrate to the children and their families that this is feasible, that it’s safe . . . and that it’s fun” he said.
If the event gets enough local interest then Anderson will move to the next phase as he helps to conduct a local “walk audit” of the routes home from school.
“We reconvene another group of stakeholders to actually go out and take inventory of everything they see whether it be sidewalks, crosswalks, lighting, overgrown trees, whatever is going to make the situation unsafe for children to walk,” he said. “We’ll make a list of it, do a report for you and try and connect you to any funding sources…to try to address these issues.”
Local parent and Walking School Bus participant Jacqueline Daniel is well aware of some of those issues.
“I’m well known in the city here for harassing them about sidewalks,” she said. “So when I heard from Mrs. Armstrong this was coming up I was like 'Oh, let me get involved.'”
As the founder of ConnectAbility, Daniel has seen firsthand how obstructions can slow the roll of those in wheel chairs. This is also an issue that City officials are aware of as well.
When contacted by The Nugget, City Manager Allison Martin said the City is hoping to make improvements to that stretch of sidewalk soon.
“There is a Phase II sidewalk project from Subway to Skyline,” she said. “Those plans are under review by the Georgia Department of Transportation. Once we receive any comments and clear those, the project will be bid.”
Meanwhile, Armstrong said there are definite bus routes where walking or biking would just make sense, in particular a certain route that transports students a quick mile down the road to the Public Square.
“Those who are riding that Bus 47 to town can see it is possible to walk all the way down there,” said Armstrong. “And it doesn’t really take that long.”
Ideally the Walking Bus movement is designed to help bring about Georgia Safe Routes for School's stated mission to “encourage physical activity, improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion and emissions around schools, address traffic safety concerns and engage communities.”
And while that’s definitely worthwhile, Anderson said local students might just wind up embracing this new kind of bus for a much simpler reason.
“Some of the kids might want to keep doing it,” he said, “because they have so much fun.”