Park Orchard kids walk to school

Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Park Orchard Elementary School students and parents, led by Principal Scott West, walk together through the leaves and the fog to school on Friday morning.

by Charles H. Featherstone Staff Writer
| October 31, 2016 1:00 AM

MOSES LAKE — “Let’s do this next year!”

“Let’s do this next month!”

The children’s voices sounded excited. About something that was once mundane and fairly unorganized — walking to school.

“We will if the weather permits,” Park Orchard Elementary Principal Scott West told the kids walking with him through the cold and the fog.

About 40 students from Park Orchard Elementary — along with their parents, a few teachers, and even a police escort — gathered at the intersection of Valley Road and Crestview Road. To walk to their school as part of International Walk to School Month, which ends on Monday.

“We want to incorporate families, and help involve these kids in physical fitness,” West said. “It also helps create a sense of community, and we do all we can to involve parents.”

Walk to School Day, which was on Oct. 5, started in 1997 “as a one-day event aimed at building awareness for the need for walkable communities,” according to the Walk-Bike to School website maintained by the National Center for Safe Routes to School.

The event became international, with October devoted to walking and biking to school, in 2000, when parents and teachers in the UK and Canada joined the event.

Teya Porter, mother of a second-grade student at Park Orchard, said she’s not sure why kids don’t walk to school anymore.

“Maybe they don’t think it’s safe,” she said.

Porter walked with the kids this morning.

“It’s a fun, free way for family, students, and staff to get together, and it’s good exercise,” she said.

After the short walk, West said he was pleased by the turnout. A little less than 10 percent of Park Orchard’s 480 students walked to school Friday morning.

“We’ll do this again,” he said.