Another reason for walkable neighborhood schools

Police investigators comb through the wreckage of a collision between an Arlington County school bus and a garbage truck that left one child dead. Lois Raimondo - The Washington Post)

There has been a thread on the public.spaces email list about the importance of maintaining neighborhood schools (often historic) that children walk to, instead of riding buses.

In the course of the thread, it occurred to me that one way to lay out an advocacy campaign to support neighborhood schools is to focus on the high costs that bus service imposes on school districts in terms of (1) ongoing operations -- vehicles, fuel, maintenance, personnel; (2) safety; and (3) other peer group issues.

Tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor has an article about bullying on school buses, and the online Washington Post has this article about a school bus-garbage truck accident today in Arlington County Virginia, which resulted in many injuries and the death of a 9 year old girl.

There are many resources on the importance of maintaining historic schools, including the resources on the "Historic Neighborhood Schools" page of the Issues and Initiatives section of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The trash truck hit the bus and continued east before it jumped a curb and struck a tree, where it remained for several hours. Speed does not appear to have been a factor, police said. Photograph by: James A. Parcell -- The Washington Post.