Dunwoody Elementary Schools to Participate in International Walk to School Day

Lace up your sneakers and grab your water bottle. This Wednesday, more than a thousand Dunwoody children are projected to walk to school to celebrate International Walk to School Day.

October marks International Walk to School month, a global campaign to promote the benefits of walking, which include reduced traffic, improved air quality, better health and a boost in academic performance.

Last year, more than forty countries and millions of children worldwide participated and this year all five of Dunwoody’s elementary schools —Austin, Chesnut Charter, Dunwoody Elementary School (DES), Kingsley and Vanderlyn — will host a walking/biking event Wednesday to acknowledge the occasion.

Kingsley, designated a gold level school in the Safe Routes to School program, expects a great turnout, while Chesnut and DES, the city’s unranked elementary schools, plan to improve on past performance and form walking school buses.

“We improved on last year’s numbers,” said Chris Newberry, a Chamblee police officer and Chesnut’s Safe Routes to School representative, said regarding the results of last month’s local event, Dunwoody Walk to School Day. “We chose meet-up points with both single family and multi-family residents in mind.”

Newberry thinks that strategy helped bolster numbers and anticipates an additional uptick in participation for Wednesday’s event. He encourages the Chesnut community to provide feedback by sending an email to walk@chesnutcharter.com.

DES, which is working toward bronze certification in the Safe Routes to School program, hopes to beat the turnout for last month’s event.

“We had an overall participation rate of 33 percent within the school, which kind of surprised me,” Rosemary Gorham, the parent volunteer who chairs the PTO’s transportation committee, said in an email. “I thought it would be more.”

But Gorham embraces the challenge. For Wednesday’s event, she organized three walking school buses with meeting points located a twenty-minute walk from school. (She convinced me to don a yellow volunteer shirt and “drive” one of the buses.) Volunteers will reward walkers and bikers with wristbands, stickers, and pencils, and the class with the most participants will win the Golden Sneaker award.

While Gorham works on short-term strategies to improve DES’s walk and bike culture, the administration is coordinating with its School Council to identify and implement long-term solutions.

“We are working to obtain that small parcel of land behind school,” Clark said in an email.

One of the possible uses for the property includes a walking/biking trail that leads to a dead-end street in Village Mill. This would allow walkers and bikers who reside in neighborhoods behind the school to avoid the traffic on Womack Road altogether, thus improving safety. However, DES needs to determine the ownership of the property, the legal implications for sharing the property, insurance issues, and the logistics of creating a pedestrian and bike path. As DES pursues this possibility, they will continue to involve DeKalb County School System, Georgia Perimeter College, Dunwoody officials, and Dunwoody Homeowners Association in the process.

“I would love to see something similar to what I call the VanderWoody trail that Boy Scouts built last year to connect the Vanderlyn campus to Womack Road,” Clark said. He hopes to partner with Safe Routes to School if the project moves forward.

To find out if your local school has established walking school bus meeting points for Wednesday, visit the school’s website.

Remember to walk safe: wear bright clothing, watch for traffic, obey traffic signs and signals, and when crossing a street, stop, look left-right-left, and listen. Safe Routes to School offers several tips for adults to teach children pedestrian safety.

Upcoming Events:

• International Walk to School Day: Oct. 5, 2011
• Georgia Walk to School Day: March 7, 2012