I spotted the book How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance at BookExpo last year. It’s the story of urban school revived by a group of committed parents, not a book about the importance of walking to school. I like both ideas. The challenge of improving rural schools is quite different in some ways, but I think walking is a vital part of the picture because schools should be grounded in a community. That’s the way it used to be here, but after the big school battles I was involved in 10 years ago, we now have an expensive, remote “campus” and empty buildings in the center of town. The social and environmental consequences of this are something I’ll be writing about, and we’ll look at the role of neighborhood schools in creating cohesive and lively community centers.