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Teaching the next generation about the benefits of bicycling and walking just got easier for Oregon educators.

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) and Oregon Safe Routes to School have partnered to develop and produce the Neighborhood Navigators curriculum, and they are now distributing it online, free of charge to educators.

Focusing on efficient and healthy transportation choices, pedestrian safety, and community and neighborhood design, the curriculum includes age-appropriate lessons and skill practice activities for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

For more information and to access the Neighborhood Navigators curriculum, visit BTA at http://www.bta4bikes.org.

Image from Neighborhood Navigators Grades 4-5 Curriculum
Article courtesy of Jacob Knight

Twenty-six new citizen evaluators joined Peoples Advocacy for Trails Hawai’s (PATH) HOALA project as trained Safe Routes to School evaluators on Thursday, Feb. 4th. HOALA – Hawaii’s Opportunity for Active Living Advancement – aims to help 12 Hawaii Island schools reduce childhood obesity by improving the ability for children to get to and from school by walking or bicycling.

According to PATH, the new evaluators, “will help to assess the walkability and bikeability of school zones in 12 elementary schools across the island of Hawaii.  Evaluators were trained in the PEDS assessment tool and on how to conduct traffic counts and safety observations.

The HOALA project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Active Living Research Program. Elementary schools across the island with at least 35% of students on free or reduced-cost lunch are eligible to apply.  To find out more, visit the HOALA page on the PATH Web site or contact PATH at laura@pathhawaii.org.”

(SAN FRANCISCO, CA) — According to a press release issued today by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “Parents and students will be taking to the sidewalks and forming ‘walking school buses’ all across the city when SF schools celebrate Walk to School Day, Oct. 7th. Walk to School Day is also the kick off for a new program that will help raise a new generation of walkers and bikers. The new two-year Safe Routes to Schools program, funded by a $500,000 grant from the federal government, aims to make biking and walking to school easier for parents and kids through education, safer streets and incentives.

The Safe Routes to School Program is led by the SF Department of Public Health and supported by the SF Bicycle Coalition, SF Unified School District, SF Police Department, and the SF Municipal Transportation Agency. It will be launched at five elementary schools this school year including: Bryant (Mission District), George Washington Carver (Bayview), Longfellow (Excelsior), Sunnyside (Sunnyside), Sunset (Outer Sunset). 68% of the students at these schools live within one mile of their school, so there’s an amazing opportunity to increase the number of kids who get to school by bike and foot. Next year 10 additional schools will be added to the program for a total of 15 schools.

“The Safe Routes to Schools program teaches students and parents about how easy it can be to save our earth by reducing pollution,” says Phyllis Matsuno, Principal of Longfellow Elementary School (SFUSD) Principal Phyllis. “We’re thrilled that Longfellow was selected to participate in this program, it’ll help us promote healthy, active and attentive students.”

Getting more children to walk and bicycle to school is a much-needed solution. In San Francisco, one quarter of children are overweight and studies show that 75% of these overweight children will become overweight as adults, translating into more cases of diabetes, asthma and other chronic diseases. During the past four decades the obesity rate for children ages 6 to 11 has more than quadrupled (from 4.2 to 17 percent), and the obesity rate for adolescents ages 12 to 19 has more than tripled (from 4.6 to 17.6 percent). In addition, communities throughout the U.S. report that as much as 21 percent of morning traffic can be parents driving their children to schools.

The Safe Routes to School is a popular nationwide program that has a proven track record at over 5,440 schools for helping more children and communities become healthy, safe, and green. Schools in Oakland, California reported an amazing 10% increase in students walking and biking to school after just one year of launching their Safe Routes to School.

“Safe Routes to Schools is one of the best ways to improve conditions for walking and biking,” says Leah Shahum, Executive Director of the 10,000-member SF Bicycle Coalition, which promotes bicycling for everyday transportation. “We know that fewer and fewer kids are walking and biking to school today and that this is having a direct, negative effect on kids’ long-term health and habits. Fortunately, we know we can turn this alarming trend around.”

Studies show that 78% of school age children are not getting enough exercise and that this generation will likely be the first to have a lowered life expectancy than their parents. “Bicycling and walking are wise public health investments because they encourage active lifestyles that will help prevent disease,” says Mitch Katz, MD, Director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH).

“Walking is an important part of our day and a great time for us to talk about what she did at school, go over her spelling words and take in the view from the top of Morse and Allyson streets,” says Jacquie Chavez, ‘Walk to Win Wednesday’ co-founder and mother of a first grader at Longfellow Elementary. “My daughter is learning to be safe, smart and independent and we are making the streets safer by not adding another car to the road.”

For more on International Walk to School Day in San Francisco, see: http://www.sfwalktoschool.com. For more information on the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the SF Safe Routes to Schools Program see http://www.sfbike.org.”

According to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, students in at least 27 Maine schools, from Aroostook to York counties, will commute by foot or bicycle this week.  While most schools have activities planned for October 7 (International Walk & Bike to School Day), some have organized walking and/or bicycling events on other days.

Parents, teachers and volunteers at each school have organized the events, including “walking school buses” (children walking under adult supervision) and “bike trains” (groups bicycling under adult supervision). Maine’s Safe Routes to School program, managed by the Bicycle Coalition of Maine under contract to MaineDOT, provides support and encourages more schools to participate.

“The Safe Routes to School program seeks to change the habits of a generation,” said Allison Vogt, the coalition’s executive director. “The events taking place this week will help make that happen by showing students, parents and teachers the value of commuting by bicycle and by foot.”

Since the Maine Safe Routes to School program began in 2001, more than 150 schools have become involved.  The program has provided funding to more than 30 communities for infrastructure improvements to make walking and biking safer.

The program has two regional coordinators: Sarah Cushman (sarah@sarahcushman.com ) in southern Maine and Darcy Whittemore (saferoutes@BikeMaine.org ) in the central part of the state. For more information or details about the October 7 events, please e-mail them or call 207-623-4511.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) has awarded Bike Walk Mississippi (BWM) a $50,000 grant!  This grant will allow BWM to partner with Mississippi Safe Routes To School to customize the current SRTS Guide with Mississippi examples, create a SRTS quarterly newsletter, send a BWM representative to the National SRTS Conference and much more.  BWM is also coordinating the training of 40+ LCI members across the state to increase bike safety awareness within Mississippi communities with the help of MDOT. 

For more information, click here…

According to Bicycle Colorado, “The Colorado Transportation Commission voted this month on the 2009-10 Safe Routes to School grant applications. Bicycle Colorado will be in 17 different schools to provide its proven in-class and on-bike skills and safety instruction to students. The grant funding requests this round totaled $5.6 million - more than 4 times the amount of funding available and demonstrating the desire and need throughout the state for bicycle and pedestrian safety education for children and safer roads and sidewalks surrounding schools and neighborhoods.”

For more information, click here…

According to the Iowa Bicycle Coalition (IBC), “Teachers or communities hoping to implement more bicycling and walking education into the classroom, the before and after school program, or recreation programs have a new resource.”  IBC has just released “Iowa Kids on the Move”, a new curriculum for Iowa schools.  The curriculum is based upon models from Portland and Fort Collins that integrate walking and bicycling into the school day. 

get a copy of this new resourcefrom their web site or from the Alliance Online Bike & Ped Advocacy Resource Library.