Join the celebration and walk to school on National Walk to School Day.
On Wednesday, October 6, schools across the United States will celebrate National Walk to School Day. Registration is now open and anyone is welcome to join! You can register schools, neighborhoods or families to pledge to walk to school so you can celebrate in the safest way possible under your current public health guidelines.
How to celebrate #WalktoSchoolDay
National Walk to School Day provides a way for schools and communities to come together to encourage physical activity and promote safety in their neighborhoods and near schools. Looking for ways to celebrate with your school, neighborhood or family? Walk and Bike to School created a list of 20 different ways to celebrate the day, including creating traffic gardens in your school’s parking lot, organizing a virtual advocacy day of action to address road safety concerns in your neighborhood and creating a “park and walk” campaign to reduce motor vehicle traffic arriving at your school.
If this is your first time planning an event for National Walk to School Day, you can check out Walk and Bike to School’s Getting Started Guide as a launching point. Schools and neighborhoods can work together to support safe walking and biking to school by limiting or closing streets adjacent to schools. You can learn more about how to do this work with the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center’s newest resource guide, Re-envisioning School Streets: Creating More Space for Children and Families
When planning your event, be sure to follow any public health guidelines to keep yourself and your community safe. You can show off your hard work and tag your events and photos on social media using the hashtag #WalktoSchoolDay.
To encourage your community to walk and roll to school all year-round, check out these Safe Routes Back 2 School resources from the National Safe Routes Partnership. As schools and communities prepare to return to school, these resources will help you create a Socially-connected, Active, Future for Everyone.
The Committee on Safe and Healthy Journeys to School During the COVID-19 Pandemic & Beyond, alongside the Safe Routes Partnership and National Center for Safe Routes to School, launched Back to School Together as a resource for getting kids back to school under current public health guidelines. The resource page includes Key Travel Strategies, National Guidance and Recommendations, and Community Actions and Innovations
The California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) also has a series of Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Lesson Plans available on gosafelyca.org that provide guidance on teaching walking and biking safety for students in transitional kindergarten through high school.