Students at Horace Mann Elementary School on Education Hill are working hard to make the campus a greener place.

From maintaining worm bins in class to turning the parking lot into a no-idle zone, Horace Mann’s Green Team is doing what it can to make the school more environmentally friendly. Their latest endeavor has been encouraging students to walk to school.

To give their classmates a little extra motivation, the Green Team — an extracurricular activity for fifth- and sixth-graders led by fifth-grade teacher Marie Hartford — has started a Walking School Bus program.

The program, which kicked off its first “ride” Wednesday morning, consists of six bus teams from different neighborhoods, led by parent captains. The captains designate a meeting point and time for their respective neighborhoods and then walk to school. On the pilot trip, despite the cold, buses had anywhere between 20 and 35 passengers.

“It’s really great when you can walk with people,” Hartford said.

Bus captain Deb Nielsen agrees. As a parent who regularly walks her child to school, she said the school bus program is a great way to encourage more people to do so because it becomes a community activity.

“It fosters a sense of community, meeting your neighbors,” she said.

Nielsen’s team, the Red Team, had 26 walkers Wednesday morning. When she stepped out of her house, the initial meeting point, she had about a dozen walkers ready to go. As they proceeded to walk to school, they picked up more along the way at pre-designated locations — like a real school bus, Nielsen said. Some parents also came along for the ride, which she was grateful for because keeping track of 26 kids is not easy.

Nielsen added that for parents, if they can’t be there, having another adult present when their child walks to school is reassuring.

Hartford, who was selected as a 2011 Earth Hero at School by King County, said while this was the first Walking School Bus day, the school already has a monthly walk-to-school day. She said the days were initiated by the Green Team and began as a way to lessen the traffic coming in and out of Horace Mann, located at 17001 N.E. 104th, in the morning, which often spills onto the street. Also, in conjunction with the no-idle zone parking lot, the walking days were also a way to lessen car emissions on campus.

Walk-to-school days have also had a significant impact on the school’s tardies — the number of students arriving at school late drops dramatically when people walk. Hartford said on one of the first walking days, Horace Mann had only three tardies; the school usually has at least two or three times more.

On one particularly rainy day, the school had more than two dozen late students. Sixth-grader Emma Barry was among those students and said the line was out the office door and staff actually came out into the hallway to issue tardy slips.

Emma is one of about 35 students on Hartford’s Green Team. In addition to encouraging her classmates to walk to school, she and her teammates also go to schools in the district to talk about their walking programs and how their peers can do the same thing at their school.

To encourage participation, the Green Team has come up with contests and challenges among classes and bus teams. They even had a fashion show at lunch to show students what kind of clothes they can wear to walk in the rain. Local businesses and organizations have also donated treats, prizes and snacks for participants.

Additionally, the Green Team has talked to the organizers from Sustainable Redmond, a local grassroots organization with the mission to encourage citizens, businesses and local government toward sustainability, to see what they can do to encourage walking in the city.

“It was kind of interesting,” Emma said. “They had a lot of questions.”

The Green Team also plans to talk to their neighbors at Redmond High School and Redmond Junior High School and then eventually Redmond City Council.