Sacramento Republicrat

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February 22, 2006

Local Sacramento School Wants Kids To Walk To School

A local Sacramento school is recommending that children walk to school. Regency Park Elementary which is part of the Rio Linda Union School District, is asking parents NOT to drive their kids to school. In an effort to keep children away from moving cars, the school is redesigning it's drop off and pick up policy.

In a letter sent home to parents, it starts off with the following paragraph:

We are encouraging all families living in the Regency Park Community to allow their students to walk to and from school each day. Kids today don't have as many opportunities to be as physically active as they once did. At school, physical education time is just 200 minutes every two weeks and is not conducted by a specialist. Today's children have a wider variety of television programs and video games to entertain them. These realities are keeping kids from getting regular phyisical activity and may be contributing to a growing number of overweight children, which has increased by 63% over the past 30 years.

We received a seven page handout outlining the schools plan. You can view it here in .PDF format.

Ok, so it sounds like I am complaining about something good the school is attempting to do. Wrong! That's not it at all. I am all for the fact that the school wants to implement an enviroment that is more safe for our children.

What I am against is the fact that the school is pushing us to have our children walk to school. This program needs to be thought out further before they implement it. Children who are in the First, Second, or even Third grade should not be left alone to walk to school unless it is absolutely necessary. It is a parents choice and NOT the schools. Are they going to provide security or protection for my children as they walk to school? No.

There are dangerous and vile people out there who prey on kids walking alone. I went to Megan's Law website and put in the two zip codes that cover my general area and the area my children would have to pass through to get to school. The database located three individuals that my kids would have to go right by twice a day. Uh, I don't think so!

This blog called both Regency Park Elementary School as well as Rio Linda Union School District for comment. Both declined. One cited that they were looking in to the matter due to the influx of telephone calls.

In closing, I am in no way against our children getting additional excercise. Nor am I against a safer enviroment around vehicles. I am against the school trying to persuade parents to have their children walk to school so they have less vehicles to deal with.

On the "Driving Around the School" map on the PDF, they make a statement, Driving around the school, "IF YOU MUST", follow this path. "IF I MUST", you're damn skippy I must...

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October 24, 2005

Rosa Parks: The Woman Who Changed a Nation... R.I.P.

Tonight civil rights pioneer, Rosa Parks passed away. Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "Mother of the civiuses, restaurants and public accommodations" throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.

Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes, said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers (search), D-Mich.

Technorati Tags: Rosa Parks , Civil Rights

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I am a father of two and have been married to a wonderful woman for 11 years. I have lived in California for 8 years. I have always been a conservative with a slight liberal streak. The Right has good idea's, the Left has good idea's, let's take the best from both...