My elementary school was maybe a mile away, and I walked or rode my bike. High school was only three blocks away, so needless to say, I walked.
University was a twenty-minute subway ride.
I went to IHM for 8 years - I’m a year older than you, and that school was constantly growing to accommodate all the Baby Boomers. Then to Loch Raven Junior High, Parkville Senior High, and one year at Goucher College. Everything was in walking distance in those days!
The only time my daughter was within walking distance of school was high school. Before then, she always rode the bus. In elementary school, the bus stop was a few hundred yards from our driveway, and for middle school, the bus stopped at the end of our drive, since we were living in the boonies in Virginia those years.
Grade 1 thru 3, walked 0.8 miles.
Grades 4 thru 6, crawled 1933* feet thru storm sewers (bullies targeted me almost every day, went underground to avoid them).
Grade 7-8 (court-ordered busing), walked 750 feet to bus stop, then 8 miles across town to the ghetto.
Grade 9-10 (parents moved to get us out of that hellhole), walked 500 feet to the school.
Grade 11-12, drove the car I’d bought about 1.5 miles to the high school.
*According to Google distance measuring. The pipelines were a direct route and much shorter distance.
K-8 – about 1 mile. The official crossing of the busy road was out of my way, so I remember doing that “illegally” on my own. I did get a ride in to school sometimes and bicycled as well. I don’t remember getting a ride home but I probably did. It was pretty flat.
9-12 (High School) – 1.4 miles. I remember I was just close enough that I didn’t qualify for the bus. I knew kids a block away that did ride the bus. Most of the time I rode into school (it was on my mom’s way to work), but walked home many times. The high school was on a river island, so my house was uphill from that.
Brian
Primary school I always got driven- we lived a few miles away down fast roads with no safe walkways, and there was no school bus, them not being so much of a thing in England.
For secondary school, it was a 6 mile drive to the train station, a 10 mile train trip- both with my brother, who was frustratingly late getting up, so we often missed the train- then about half a mile walk to our different schools. The train was routinely late, and sometimes so crowded they left kids on the platform (though never me, luckily). A couple of times I got the bus instead, when I was a little older and my parents went away for a few days so the lift to the station wasn’t an option; the bus was from the end of our street, but went round allll the back roads, took around an hour and a half and cost something like 4 times the train fare, so that wasn’t a practical everyday option.
There were closer options for a school, including some that would have had a school bus available, but that school was supposedly the best in the area (single sex schools, hence the brother going to a different one), so that’s where I was sent.
If someone thought they spotted a snowflake we got sent home, so no walking in the snow. The supposed reason for this was that we had a number of students living on hill farms, so if there was snow in town, it would be worse on the hills- but it rarely got very bad even up there, plus they all had tractors available, and none of them ever got snowed in, so that was kinda nonsense. It didn’t happen often anyway.
About 1km. 0.62 miles, apparently.
Grades 1 through 7 - school was at the end of the dead-end street I lived on. Maybe 250-300 steps to get there.
Grades 8 through 11 - school was about 3/4 of a mile away. No need to cross any major streets, but there was a busy rail crossing - the lowered gates could delay my arrival by a few minutes.
In both of the above - everyone was within walking distance of the schools - as were many of the teachers. No lunch at school - we walked back home for lunch - rain, shine, or snow.
My infant and junior schools were just across the road from home, although the school gates on my street weren’t always open so we had to walk for about five minutes to get round to the other gates. When I was 11, I moved to a single-sex grammar school, almost three miles away.
That involved a 15-minute walk to the bus stop, then squeezing onto the school bus that went directly there. If we missed the school bus or weren’t allowed on (right on the edge of the catchment area so getting a school pass for the bus was always a fight), it was a bus to the next big town, then a walk across to the next bus stop, and a bus up to school.
If it snowed, we got a bus if we could for all or part of the journey, or we walked. It would take probably close to two hours walking but we rarely had school closures so you were expected to make the effort.
Having endured 60+ winters, I think this is true as well, at least where I lived in Pennsylvania. For several years in the 1960s I recall we had a snow-and-ice cover for the duration of the winter, and schools being closed for days at a time because the busses couldn’t get through following a major snowfall. Then for several years in the 80s, we rarely got snow but sure had a lot of ice and freezing rain. And in the 90s, we had some whopper snowstorms including one verified blizzard. I suppose it’s a natural ebb and flow of the environment.
Ha! Different animal. I was a crossing guard as you describe - tho I think we called it “patrol boy” - even after they started allowing girls. Did you used to roll your patrol belts up and hang them from your belt?
The crossing guard at the busy street was an adult employee of the Police Dept.
Our very sexist school didn’t allow girls to be Safety Patrols till long after I was gone. And the sexist high school wouldn’t allow girls to wear pants, even when it was windy and cold, altho they would permit it in the worst weather if you had a note from home. And finally in my senior year, girls could wear pantsuits.
But no one could wear jeans… sorry, that’s another thread entirely.
K-5: 534 feet.
6-8: 320 feet to bus stop; 2.3 miles on bus the rest of the way.
9: 320 feet to bus stop; 3 miles on bus the rest of the way.
10: 194¾ feet to bus stop; 2 miles on bus the rest of the way.
10½ (summer school): typically got a ride with Dad but tried walking home one afternoon – got 3 miles then a cop gave me a ride for the remaining 3 miles.
11 & 12: ¼ mile to bus stop; 3 miles on bus the rest of the way. Missed the bus one afternoon and tried walking; encountered Dad somewhere along the way.
11½ (summer school): ¼ quarter mile to Jefferson Transit bus stop, 3 miles on bus, and walking another 490 feet from the bus stop closest to the school.
We moved between my Freshman & Sophomore years and again between my Sophomore & Junior years; I found a summer school much closer to home to make up one class.
I never walked to school – somebody always drove me and dropped me off. but I always walked home.
At first it was about a third of a mile – but, understand - it was kindergarten, and i was only 4 when I started.
In grammar school (catholic school) I walked over 1/2 mile home
High school was about a mile if you counted all the twists and turns (you couldn’t walk in a straight line). And by that time I was carrying a stack of books and usually my trumpet case. I wish backpacks had been in wide use by then. It would’ve made things easier (In grammar school I had a book bag, but you had to keep switching hands)
Our grade school was K-8. I was born in 1960. I believe you could join safety patrol in 6th gr, and they allowed girls in either my 6th or 7th grade.
My sisters were 2,3,4 years ahead of me. It is a real blast from the bast talking with them, as they clearly remember when they were first allowed to wear pants. A different age…
First few years of elementary school: a few blocks, no hills, no major streets to cross.
Next few years of elementary/junior high/high school: the bus, from a stop directly across the street from me.
Grade school-about a 14 minute walk. Junior high-7 minutes. High s chool-7 minutes. In the winter, my father drove me.
One of our family “legends” is somehow related to my first day of first grade. As I mentioned, I had 3 older sisters. We were all supposed to walk to/from school together, including for lunch (remember walking home for lunch?) I think it was my first day of 1st grade when my sisters failed to wait around for me or something, leaving me crying at the school. Or maybe I just walked home myself w/o waiting for my sisters.
Whichever, I’m sure that trauma goes a good way towards explaining why I am so messed up today! 
I just Google Earthed it. One tenth of a mile from our house to the football/track field entrance, another 10th of a mile around part of the perimeter of the track to one of the back doors of our school.
I could hear the first bell ( 5 minutes before 1st period begins ) from the house and get there just in time if I wanted to, but I never cut it that close. Our school was weird in that the day began with 1st period, then homeroom, and then so on.
Mom tells me about how it was in the town in the mountains that we left when I was four: around lunchtime, there was a roving gang of school children seeking out the house that had the proper macaroni, which was the kind made by layering cheese and pasta in a casserole dish with milk poured over and bread crumbs on top, baked in the oven. The area they had to cover was maybe half a square mile, so I would guess they met with success most of the time.
K to halfway through 3rd, about 3 blocks over level ground, one real street to cross. The rest of third and all of fourth, about 4 or 5 blocks, also level. Fifth through eighth, it was about 2 blocks, but I had to cross US 1 (there was a light). Ninth through twelfth, I took a city bus one mile to the Market El, several miles to the Broad St. Subway, several more miles and then walked three blocks. My first year and a half of college, my family lived only a bit more than two miles from the campus but, for some reason I never walked but walked four blocks to a trolley that took me directly to campus. Then my family moved to the burbs and I had to take a suburban trolley, they the Market El and then walk several blocks. After a year and a half of this, I got an apartment with a friend for two years and then mostly reverted to living with my family until I finished grad school, although there was one more year sharing an apartment with a different friend.