Recent policy attention and research have focused on children's school commuting. Concerns include children's health and safety, traffic congestion, environmental impacts of transportation, and parents' time chauffeuring children. Popular responses aim to increase rates of commuting by bicycle and walking (Rosenthal, 2009), but rarely do these initiatives directly account for other policies, such as school choice, that also impact school transportation. School travel is intricately tied to geography (eg urban, suburban, or rural environments), state and district school bus policy, school quality, extracurricular activities of children, and other factors. School travel policies differ among and within states; for example, some but not all states require that districts provide bus service for students.In the United States, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) aims to create and augment school travel programs under the banner of Safe Routes to School (SR2S). Such initiatives often address physical infrastructure, improvements to street design, volunteer opportunities, and educational activities to encourage bicycling and walking. Assessing the

Agricultural teachers in North Carolina were surveyed to assess their attitudes toward Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) and to identify barriers to implementation of SAE in their schools. The teachers gave the politically correct answers about why SAE was important. The teachers indicated that SAE was important (8.46 on a 10 point scale) but confessed the quality of their SAE program was only a 6.33 on the 10-point scale. Furthermore, less than 1/3 of the teachers had a 75% or higher participation rate in SAE. Clearly this is a paradox; the results don't match the rhetoric. Teachers believe that SAE is not rewarded/recognized to the extent of involvement in FFA activities. Teachers identified the number of students they teach, conflicting demands on their time, lack of knowledge of new approaches to SAE, inadequate SAE opportunities in the community, and the difficulty in teaching record keeping as barriers to implementing SAE programs. The profession needs to develop a realistic plan for addressing the barriers to implementation of SAE.

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We explore how school policies influence the environmental impacts of school commutes. Our research is motivated by increased interest in school choice policies (in part because of the U.S. "No Child Left Behind" Act) and in reducing bus service to address recent budget shortfalls. Our analysis employs two samples of elementary-age children, age 5-12: a travel survey (n = 1246 respondents) and a school enrollment data set (n = 19,655 students). Multinomial logistic regression modeled the determinants of travel mode (automobile, school bus, and walking; n = 803 students meeting selection criteria). Travel distance has the single greatest effect on travel mode, though school choice, trip direction (to- or from-school), and grade play a role. Several policies were investigated quantitatively to predict the impact on school travel, vehicle emissions, and costs. We find that eliminating district-wide school choice (i.e., returning to a system with neighborhood schools only) would have significant impacts on transport modes and emissions, whereas in many cases proposed shifts in school choice and bus-provision policies would have only modest impacts. Policies such as school choice and school siting may conflict with the goal of increasing rates of active (i.e., nonmotorized) school commuting. Policies that curtail bus usage may reduce bus emissions but yield even larger increases in private-vehicle emissions. Our findings underscore the need to critically evaluate transportation-related environmental and health impacts of currently proposed changes in school policy.

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