Let's go for a walk!

Attending the Traffic and Parking Subcommittee of the City Council (on an un-Who-cester matter), my ears perked up at a term not often heard in Worcester:

"walking school bus"

For those of you not familiar with the term, it's what in Worcester used to be patrol lines, which in many cases of have now degenerated into a sorting system of whose parents are parked where. The idea is that kids actually walk--yes, walk on their own two feet!--to their neighborhood school together, at a set time. In many cases with walking school buses, they are accompanied by parents, dogs, younger siblings, etc.

This is something that is being given some attention by International Walk to School. (The "walk to school day" idea was brought before the School Committee last spring and was sent to the curriculum subcommittee by recommendation of the superintendent, who was somehow under the impression that it had something to do with curriculum.) My neighborhood tried it the first week of October, and it was popular enough that we might do it again in November! (yeah, it'd be great if we could do it all the time, but it's over a mile and VERY uphill!)