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Walking School Bus Program
The Maine Walking School Bus (WSB) Program provides local schools with the opportunity to start or build on their own daily walking school bus programs, with technical and financial assistance from the statewide program. The funding supports a WSB Coordinator within the school, safety equipment, marketing materials and ongoing guidance from program staff.
A Walking School Bus (WSB):
- is a healthy, cost effective addition to a school transportation system in which groups of children are accompanied on the walk to school each morning by trained adult volunteers
- helps ensure students get some physical activity at the beginning of their day and adult volunteers help ensure that the kids are safe.
- is a model program that runs across the country and around the world
- has documented success in improving student learning and behavior; providing regular physical activity; improving traffic congestion, safety, and air quality; and fostering community connections and reducing absenteeism.
Thanks to financial support from the Maine Center for Disease Control and the Maine Department of Transportation and the able assistance of filmmaker Terrence T. Wolfe, the Maine Walking School Bus Program has four informational program videos!
The videos consist of three short (1 minute) video segments featuring interviews and shots of existing Walking School Buses for three audiences:
(1) prospective community applicants:
(2) potential community volunteers for each local program:
(3) local students and families who are prospective participants:
A longer (2.5 minute) compilation video presents all of the clips together in a single informative video:
Feel free to utilize these videos to share more about the program, start your own Walking School Buses using our Online Toolkit, and encourage your local school(s) to apply!