"Walking to school with other kids in our neighborhood every Wednesday is a blast!" said 7-year-old Cayman Stein, a student at Coleman Elementary School in San Rafael. "I walk with my friends and we often laugh along the way. It's even fun to walk in the rain."

Last month Coleman Elementary School in San Rafael started encouraging more families to walk together to school as a way to decrease traffic congestion, reduce global warming and teach children the lifelong lesson of using their feet to get places. Coleman Elementary started three Walking School Buses organized by Lynn Stein, the Safe Routes to Schools parent volunteer leader.  A Walking School Bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults, and can be as informal as two families taking turns to meet at a designated location to walk to school. Adult presence along the route reduces the worry that some parents have about letting their child walk to school.