Why Johnny and Jana Can’t Walk to School

As autumn rolls around again, we’re resuming a favorite ritual at our house. My son, Soren, starts first grade, and so each morning he, his mother, Julie, and I will stroll a few blocks to the Clara Barton public school, built in 1911 and recently renovated to add a gym. Along the way we’ll note the falling leaves, the steadily later sunrise, the morning frost, and so on through the school year until tulips bloom and the scent of lilacs hang in the breeze.

Walking to school is a special childhood rite of initiation, but, sadly, it is disappearing from the life of many American communities. And not for the reasons many people think. Racial integration plans and fear of abduction drive fewer kids into school buses and parents’ minivans than other, less recognized factors: the closing of small neighborhood schools and speeding traffic that imperils pint-sized pedestrians.

"Communities are abandoning historic neighborhood schools that students can walk to in favor of new schools the size of shopping malls built in far-flung locations," writes Edward T. McMahon, director of the American Greenways Program, in a dispatch for the Elm Street Writers Group, an online news service covering environmental and community issues (www.mlui.org).

"Schools serve as community anchors," McMahon notes. Many events, from Little League games to fitness classes to public meetings, happen after-hours at the local school. The fact that many of these threatened schools are in inner-city neighborhoods or struggling small towns means that their closing cuts deep into the heart of places that already have been battered.

Alarmed by what’s happening all across the country, the National Trust for Historic Preservation included neighborhood schools in its 2000 list of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places. But this is a bigger issue than simply architectural heritage. Communities that have lost their school feel different without kids laughing and clowning along the sidewalks. It’s more difficult for parents (especially low-income families) to participate in activities at distant schools, and they must shoulder more responsibility for chauffeuring their kids home from after-school programs.

Bigger, far-flung schools add to the already rising costs of education. A study in Maine found that while school enrollment in the state dropped by 27,000 between 1970 and 1995, the annual costs for busing jumped from $8.7 million to $54 million, due in large part to the consolidation of local schools.

The trend toward larger, out-of-the-way schools defies a tide of recent evidence showing that small schools serve students better than large ones do (see Utne Reader, Jan./Feb. 2001, p. 26).