Golden Apple: Laporte School Celebrates ‘Walk to School Day’ During Homecoming Week

Laporte Public School’s Homecoming Week is full of fun festivities for the students to participate in. On Monday, students took part in Twin Day, followed by a Pink-Out for the varsity volleyball game later that evening. For Wednesday, October 9th, kids got to dress in their favorite western gear, but they also celebrated Walk to School Day.

When school officials figured out it the event would take place during their Homecoming Week, they knew exactly how to celebrate.

“So those two things just kind of overlapped,” said Lee Pederson, Laporte Public School Principal. “But you know what, with everything going on with Homecoming, it was kind of the perfect timing for it to get all the chaos done in one week and then get back to normal next week.”

“This is National Walk to School Day, and Minnesota was promoting it, too, and we thought we’d get in on the fun,” added Superintendent AJ Dombeck.

The day involves communities from more than 40 countries and has become part of a movement for year-round safe routes to school.

“We’re working on a project with Safe Routes to School. It’s to improve safety for walkers or bikers coming to school throughout Minnesota,” explained Dombeck. “So we’re working on that, and then this kind of came up through that and it was like, this would be a fun thing to do too, just to promote walking to school, biking to school in a safe way.”

Students gathered at first responder stations to be picked up by buses to meet at the Paul Bunyan State Trail. Once all students were present, they began walking up the street to the school, waving to first responders blocking traffic along the way.

“That was great,” exclaimed Jessica Howg, a Lakeport first responder. “We love being part of the community and part of things that happen here. Just bringing the community together and doing it as a big group is always great.”

“It’s just fun to have community involved and all our first responders enjoy seeing the kids and getting to work with the kids at different times with different activities throughout the year,” added Pederson. “It was a good opportunity to help get some community involvement with a school activity that we were doing.”

School officials also want to ensure that all students who do chose to walk or bike to school do so safely.

“We’ve been wanting to promote more kids walking and biking to school for a long time,” Dombeck stated. “There’s one of the most beautiful stretches of bike trail in the state is right down the hill, but that last stretch they have to cross a busy highway, and there’s – not that it’s unsafe, but I just don’t really want to promote kids doing it without, like, adults with them supervising.”

Laporte Public School’s Homecoming Week comes to a conclusion with the Wildcats Carnival, a fundraiser for the district’s fall sports programs, which will be held Saturday from 4-8 p.m. at the school.