You’ll probably see more kids walking and riding their bikes to school on Wednesday. This is the eighth year students from West Woodland Elementary have participated in International Walk to School Day, and about 75 percent of the kids take part in the day. “Neighbors may notice large groups of students walking to school,” Sheila Cain emailed us, “Celebrating with the ‘West Woodland Wildcat’ cheer.”
As part of International Walk to School month, non-profit school groups, PTAs and public and private schools can apply mini-grants of up to $1,000 from the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to fund activities or safety improvements to encourage more students to walk or bike to school. “These mini grants help fund exciting community-based programs” says Brian Dougherty, SDOT’s Safe Routes to School Coordinator. “For example, they have funded student safety patrol, ‘walking school bus,’ attentive-driving programs, personal safety and bike safety education.” In 2009, Ballard High School, Loyal Heights PTA, Salmon Bay School, West Woodland PTA and North Beach PTA all received grants.
For more information on the SDOT mini-grant, click here.
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Walk to school? Why can’t parents drive these kids to school? It’s a sad day when we have to go back to the old days and not get to drive everywhere we want to go. What’s next, kids riding bikes?
Keep those kids out of my way, or put them in a car and drive them to school.
Great idea. I am going to look into this for our school