Wednesday, October 7 is National Walk & Roll to School Day, when students and families across the country will walk, bike, scoot and skate to school together. Families at Mar Vista Elementary are preparing another Walk ’n’ Roll Challenge, and safe-streets organizations across Los Angeles County are helping more school communities join in. Their aim is to turn a morning of celebration into ongoing organizing for safer routes to school.

Los Angeles Walks and Walk ’n’ Rollers have teamed up to support parents, teachers and community members who want to lead events at their own schools. “Our goal isn’t for us to be at every school, it’s for every school to have a great Walk to School Day,” Los Angeles Walks Executive Director Alexandra Ramirez wrote in an email announcing the effort.

The partnership will offer virtual organizing sessions, sign-making events and starter kits with banners, stickers and other materials for the first 25 schools to register for the virtual series. Los Angeles Walks is also offering its Walking With Purpose workshop to help families build on the day with walking school buses, walking clubs and advocacy for safer streets. Walk ’n Rollers’ Jim Shanman is directing local organizers to the group’s challenge page for details and registration.

At Mar Vista Elementary, the third annual Walk ’n’ Roll program brings families together around active and shared transportation. For the October 7 challenge, children can participate by walking, biking, scooting, skateboarding, or taking the school bus or public transit. Families who need to drive can park a few blocks away and walk or roll the rest of the way.

Volunteers will stamp participating students’ hands at the gates, classes will compete for the highest participation rate, and the top class in each grade will win a trophy. Parents have also organized three bike buses, which are group rides that let children travel with adults and other families. In previous years, LADOT contributed bike bells and lights as prizes.

These efforts make the school commute more social and less dependent on solo car trips. But getting more children to walk and bike also requires streets that families can trust.

Next door, Santa Monica shows what that kind of investment looks like. Its city program pairs encouragement with street construction. Around Santa Monica High School, completed improvements include bike lanes, curb extensions, enhanced crosswalks and a traffic signal at Seventh Street and Pico Boulevard. These changes reach the routes children actually travel, not just the area outside the school gate.

Advocates there are still pushing for more. Santa Monica Next reports that Santa Monica Families for Safe Streets and Streets For All are urging the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District to adopt a formal Safe Routes to School policy. The district already promotes route maps and weekly Car-Free Fridays, but advocates want a lasting commitment that assigns responsibility for traffic safety, school planning and coordination with city transportation agencies.

On the LA side of the city line, progress remains painfully slow. Los Angeles has a Safe Routes to School program, and projects such as the Venice Boulevard protected bike lanes have improved local connections. But families need a connected network, and the city is barely expanding it. Streetsblog’s latest review found that LA added just 7.5 lane-miles of new bikeways between July 2025 and June 2026 while removing 5.3, a net gain of barely two miles. Counting upgrades to existing routes, the city’s overall output still fell to its lowest level since fiscal year 2018–19.

The stakes are severe. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 14 in Los Angeles County, according to California Department of Public Health data cited by Santa Monica Families for Safe Streets. LAist reported that 290 people died in traffic collisions in Los Angeles in 2025, the year by which the city had pledged to eliminate traffic deaths. More than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians. Deaths declined from the previous year, but the city remained far from its goal.

Parents and community organizations are doing the work of bringing more families onto sidewalks and into bike buses. City and school officials need to match that effort with safer crossings, slower traffic and connected routes. The October 7 celebration is a chance to build participation and show what families want.