School Walking Bus

[Fli]

Hi - this is my first posting so I hope that it is the right place!

Has anyone set up a Walking Bus for their school? Our village schools are having a meeting this week to try and set one up and I would really appreciate any advice you could give me.

Many thanks!
Fli

hello and welcome

sorry no advice but things drop off active conversations so quickly nowadays I thought I'd give you a bump

Twig

I wish our school would do this,may suggest it .

The school I work at has just started one - very successful so far -I'll see if I can get the info about it tomorrow

Hi there - that would be fantastic Rustybear! Thanks for your messages too ggirl and Twiglett

Hi Fli
Having said that I would find some information for you about the Walking bus, I got to school this morning to find that our main server ? which is where most of the documents are ? has died on us, so I won?t be able to get at them until the backup tapes have been read, so most of what follows is from memory!

Or bus was set up mostly through the efforts of one very persistent mum, who worked with and/or in spite of the district council for what seemed like a long time.

The bus serves our Junior school and the linked infant school & starts in a council owned car park on the outskirts of town, where mums are allowed to park free to drop off their children. At the moment it only runs in the morning ? I think this is mostly because it?s much more difficult to get volunteers for the afternoon ? a lot of the morning children go to the afterschool club & their parents work from about 9.30, so they can do the morning walk whenever it?s their turn.

The maximum number is the bus is 20, and there?s an agreed ratio of adults to children which depends on how many infant or junior children there are ? the most adults is 5, with 20 infants, whereas 20 juniors or 10 & 10 would only need 4.
The volunteers are all ?vetted? by the council, though I?m not sure whether this is the full CRB check or something less agreed by the council & they are covered by the Council?s Insurance policy.

We originally started by asking how many people would be interested in a bus (a lot) and how many could help supervise (not so many) and if so how often. I?m not sure whether a place on the bus is conditional on being able to help at least occasionally ? I may be able to check this with the organiser in the next few days.
It?s now been running on this route since September and they are looking at starting another one on a different route.

This link is to the info on the safer routes to school site page, the section at the bottom(scroll down) is about the first walking bus established in our area (not our school, but ours is very similar) & the link underneath is to a bit on the schools website.

I hope this helps - I may be able to get more info if I can get hold of Nellie ( the organiser) in the next few days

Dear Rustybear

Wow - thank you so much for taking the time to send me so much useful info on your bus scheme!

Its interesting that you set off from a gathering point and then walk. I just assumed that children would be picked up from their houses along the way but this makes far more sense.The website is great too - lots of information for our meeting on Thursday. Im going to have a good read of it now!

I think that it is such a good idea, so long as we can enthuse people to make it work. Good luck with keeping yours going. Fli

I think they do pick up some children on the route who live closer to school - the new one they are thinking of might start further away, because the organiser actually walks from home to get to the pick up point - she's just waiting to find another couple of volunteers to help - if they do they may pick up some of the existing children en route, or try to establish another 'gathering point' further out - it really all depends on how many volunteers they can get.

Don't know anything about this, but was interested because we've just had a questionnaire from school about walking bus and 'Park & Stride' schemes (which I guess is like yours, Rustybear).

Presumably, though, you can have a few designated pick-up points on your route, like bus-stops, to collect children who live nearer to school.

Our infant & junior school started a walking bus. It lasted less than two months. There were not enough volunteers. If one volunteer had a child who was sick, they could not do the walk. Some of the volunteers did not actually like being pinned down to certain days all the time and actually getting volunteers in the first place was like drawing blood. It also suffered dramatically in cold and bad weather as volunteers wanted to take their children to school in cars rather than have them arrive soaking. So really it was a fair weather bus.

Sorry to put negative things down but they are points to be considered. I think walking buses will survive if there is a core group of determined parents.

this is something we've tried to raise at our school lots of times. I think it might depend on the type of school - rural etc and where parents can park to drop their children off.

As roundthebend says, it really does depend on the goodwill of the parents and everyone taking their turn. I will watch this thread with interest though to see if anything else pops up!

Our school runs a walking bus, parents drop off their children at teh local churchs car park...its a catholic school. And then the bus leaves at 8.40 and they take the 5 minute walk. Parents have to help at least once a week if they want their child to use this service. At the end of the day the bus walks the children back around to the car park. Obviously there are times when they struggle for helpers, but for parents who work its well worth it.

should also mention that the route has to be police checked. There are two ways our bus could go but the police refused one of them, dont know why.