Let's look at the advantages to consolidated schools. I used to transit three school zones on my way to town. Now there are none. Travel is faster, traffic reduced and none of those annoying slow zones wasting gas.
The logical extension of this trend is to close ALL the schools so the next generation will be ignorant enough to vote Liberal en masse.

Ben is right - whether you agree with this school concept or not is irrelevent right now - this is what we have to work with. Parents need to learn how to drive first off. All of the rules seem to be thrown out the window as they try to get little Jimmy as close to the door as possible, faster than anyone else. If people would realize its busy and leave a little earlier it would help. Too many people running right to the second on whether they make it to work on time and still get thier Timmies fix.
Oh and STAY OUT OF THE BUS LANES.

I walked to and from school every day for twelve years. Never had the misfortune of walking into a vehicle.But that's me. Not walking into a van, now would be considered a life skill. Right?

First 2 years I walked 2 blocks to school in an inner city urban setting. There were no school buses.

Next 3 years I walked 10 blocks in an inner city urban setting. There were no school buses. However, I had to cross a busy collector street that had traffic signals.

Next 2 years I walked 2 blocks in an inner city urban setting. Also no school buses.

Next 5 years in high school I walked just under one km, half of which was through an open field, especially fun with snow in the winter.

I entered the school from the side entrance, thus avoiding school buses who dropped students off at the front entrance.

So, managed to avoid people who liked to pick up little kids, freezing to death in white outs across fields now occupied by high rise condos, and found a way to avoid big yellow things with tires.

So I can see the confusion that children of today have. There simply are no Nintendo games which take one through the realities of crossing a road with all sorts of complicating factors. :-)

Part of the problem is that way too many parents drive their kid's to school. I'm
not sure where this mentality came from
but last time I looked children had 2
legs & 2 feet. When I lived in the Foothills area parents from literally 1
block away would hop in the car & give little Billy a ride to school.
If you live miles from your childs school
certainly giving them a ride is understandable, but if you're a few blocks away??? Let them walk, it's healthy & they
get some of the skill blocks needed in life, like how to do something without
Mommy & Daddy jumping in & doing it for you.

This incident did not even happen close to Heather Park Elem. It happened across the street from Kelly Road Secondary. The 10 year old was walking to HPE when the he walked into the side of the moving minivan. This incident has nothing to do with the 19 buses or 710 kids enrolled at HPE. Meisner should get his facts straight and report the full story instead of leading readers to think HPE is unsafe.

I never walked into a van either... I guess I was one of the lucky ones.

I guess they did not have too many problems with the few horse and buggies that dropped you off at school back in the day.