Mom campaigns to get kids out of cars, walking to school

Diane Peterson hates to see the long line of cars and sport utility vehicles idling away, dropping off and picking up schoolchildren.

And she believes children need more exercise than many are currently getting.

So this past month she organized a local campaign at Alice Gustafson Elementary School in Batavia that addresses both concerns: Get children to walk to school.

"I'm hoping this will just be the start," she said of the effort for International Walk to School Month.

Peterson and her two children - one in first grade and one in fifth grade - have always walked to school. A friend who is into the environmental movement alerted her to the worldwide campaign. The school principal liked the idea and told her to go ahead.

Peterson and other volunteers have been meeting children along routes to the school to cheer them on, and hand out pieces of fruit. "I've handed out about 200 bananas every week," she said. Her fifth-grade daughter said her classmates were "really psyched" about the produce prize.

Thursday, she had a surprise for them: Firefighters came to greet them, as did Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke.

Besides the exercise and environmental benefits, there is a social benefit to walking to school: It's a time for kids to develop a relationship, whether with their parents or neighbor classmates. Kids might be more apt to chat about things than they are after school, when the response to "How was school today?" might only elicit a nondescript answer of "OK."

"She tells me a lot of stuff," Peterson said of her oldest child.