Walk To School

After years of delays, Howard County officials hope to see reconstruction start this summer on the segregation-era one-room schoolhouse known as the Ellicott City Colored School. Envisioned as a monument to the past struggles of African-Americans relegated to second-class citizenship and a living, teaching museum for the present, the tattered wooden structure sitting on a hillside above Ellicott City's Main Street has awaited oft-predicted rescue since the county bought the site in 1995.

This is where Marlene Keyser stands every school morning by 8:10 - across Furnace Branch Road from North Glen Elementary School, bright orange jacket on and whistle at the ready. This is where she was 31 years ago yesterday, when she had to push 8-year-old Donald Patterson out of the path of a speeding car, its driver perhaps blinded by the rising October sun. Crossing guard and child skinned their knees but continued their daily journey across the street in the Pleasantville neighborhood they still share.

A new system for pedestrian, car and bus traffic at Taneytown Elementary School will begin Thursday and may reduce dangers that prompted parents to ask the City Council for a crossing guard in November. The Taneytown City Council decided against hiring a crossing guard for Kings Drive in front of the school because county school transportation officials developed a plan that would keep most pedestrian traffic separate from vehicles, said Mayor Henry C. Heine. "We'll dismiss the walkers first," said James Doolan, supervisor of transportation for Carroll County schools.

Fearing that their children might have to walk to classes in rush-hour traffic, a group of Catonsville parents who live near Hillcrest Elementary School has mobilized to get bus service when school opens Wednesday.The 34 students were redistricted to Hillcrest Elementary from Catonsville Elementary School this year when boundaries were drawn for the area's new school, Westchester Elementary, on Old Frederick Road near Oella.Under school policy, no bus service is offered to students who live within a one-mile radius of their school, said John M. Markowski, the Baltimore County school system's chief financial officer.

FEW THINGS CAN turn you off as quickly as an old-timer's reminiscences of how long he walked to school and under what extremes of weather.These time-fogged schoolboy recollections may not be entirely accurate. And they may seem irrelevant to today's conditions.But it's also true that a lot of adults are likely to ignore, or readily dismiss, the conditions under which young children still walk to school today.Despite appearances to the contrary, all the kids don't ride the yellow bus or the family car to school.

Anne Arundel Superintendent Carol S. Parham asked parents yesterday to supervise children at bus stops, help clear snow-covered stops and watch out for children as Anne Arundel County schools prepared to reopen today.Schools will open two hours late. There will be no preschool programs today and tomorrow because of the snow that covers area roadways and sidewalks."We need parents' cooperation to make this work," Dr. Parham said.About 20,000 of the school system's 72,000 students walk to school each day. Dr. Parham said she considered delaying the reopening because of the number of communities with snowy roads and sidewalks.

Despite the nationwide cry to "get government off our backs," the public can't seem to shake its dependence on cradle-to-grave assistance. Take the Howard County families who want public bus service for their children, but who live too close to their local schools to qualify for it. As indicated in a recent survey by the county PTA Council, parents fret that the walkways their kids take to school pose dangers. The paths, argue the parents, are secluded, close to traffic or near construction sites (although an accounting of related mishaps is hard to come by.)

Parents of Howard County elementary school students believe their children are safe in school but are worried about their safety while walking to and from schools, according to a recently completed safety survey by the county PTA Council.The council's first survey of 678 parents of elementary, middle and high school students also found that they're concerned about bullying and fighting that occurs at schools even among younger children."My impressions from reading the responses is that people generally think the schools are safe," said Wanda Hurt, the PTA Council's safety committee chairwoman, who compiled the survey results.

The Howard County school board refused yesterday to give bus service to about 25 Laurel Woods Elementary School students, saying their walking route to school along a hilly section of North Laurel Road poses no danger.Board members voted 4-0, with one member absent, to accept Superintendent Michael E. Hickey's decision not to provide bus service to the North Laurel Park area students.Members said the path that the students take to school -- a narrow, dirt pathway along North Laurel Road, north of Cissell Avenue -- is safe enough for the students to use."

The Howard County PTA Council is opening a Pandora's box by insisting that officials change a county school system policy on busing students.Specifically, the council wants the Board of Education to define what it considers an "acceptable level of safety" when it decides which children to bus to school. Currently, the policy is to transport elementary students when they live more than a mile from school, unless the path they must walk is considered unsafe. Middle and high school students are bused if they live more than 1.5 miles from school.