Cleveland's Schools are Taking the Walking School Bus
July 2005
After Broadway: A Community on the Move's community partnership initiated a successful Walking School Bus pilot at Mound Elementary in 2004, Cleveland Mayor Jane L. Campbell became aware of this innovative program from the Cleveland Departments of Public Health and Public Safety (partners on the Broadway: A Community on the Move partnership). She was looking for ways to get Cleveland children to be more physically active and to decrease crime on the way to and from schools. Mayor Campbell asked all of her cabinet members to participate in a Walking School Bus in Slavic Village on May 4, 2005, drawing extensive media attention from all five television stations, radio stations and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. After reviewing the success of the pilot program, the Mayor and her cabinet decided to implement the Walking School Bus program in over 100 schools citywide.
Campbell has asked that all Cleveland elementary schools implement this program by August 2005. In response, the Broadway: A Community on the Move partnership teamed up with Cleveland's Steps to a HealthierCleveland program to create a Walk to School manual and Walking School Bus toolkit to be distributed to all interested schools. The Cleveland Steps program aims to reduce the burden of chronic disease through promoting increased physical activity. To assist in replicating this program across the city, Steps to a Healthier Cleveland will be supervising walk to school events at ten elementary schools, while Broadway: A Community on the Move covers five schools in their project area. The organizations will also work together to train other Cleveland community development corporations to spread the Walking School Bus program further into the city. The user-friendly manual and toolkit will become available for all other interested schools in the district. With the help of the Mayor and her progressive cabinet, Broadway: A Community on the Move's work in Slavic Village is now having an impact across the entire city.
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