Students headed back to school Thursday morning in St. Joseph and some Edison Elementary students traveled to class via the “walking school bus.”

“It’s like a normal school bus, but we walk around a designated area and we pick up kids on the corner or if it happens to be right in front of their house we’ll stop and pick them up as well,” Sam Donahoo, Walking School Bus Volunteer Coordinator said. “We do this because we have a different capacity, I think Edison only runs two school buses because you have to be outside of a mile of the school to be able to get to school on a bus and we have a ton of kids who live within that mile radius. So you’re young and you’re walking to school and we have fast streets like Faraon, Jules, 22nd… so this was designed to help get them to school safely.”

Donahoo said this year there are 21 regular volunteers which is up from 10 volunteers the first year. The goal is to soon have enough volunteers for another route on the west side of 22nd Street.

“It’s 7:45 until 8:30 in the morning, because after we get the kids here, we go downstairs and eat breakfast with them just to continue to build a relationship so they have an adult who is checking in on them, how are things going,” Donahoo said.

Anyone interested in volunteering can fill out an application by clicking here.

Thursday also marked the start of new Superintendent Dr. Doug Van Zyl’s first school year with the St. Joseph School District. Van Zyl joined the group of volunteers and students Thursday morning on the walking school bus route.

“Seems like there’s a lot of excitement in the air and kids are maybe a little sluggish trying to get off of their summer vacation but… once we get them in school and they see the excitement from the adults, we should be good to go,” Van Zyl said. “(I’m) probably just as excited as the kids, the first day of school is always an exciting thing for educators to be able to have that first opportunity to work with families and the kids and start off our school year the very best that we can.”

Dr. Van Zyl was named superintendent in February and his first day was July 2nd.