The Seattle Department of Transportation is giving away up to $1,000 mini-grants to schools, PTAs or other school-related nonprofit groups that encourage students to walk or ride their bikes to school or improve walk and bike safety. All schools, both public and private, are eligible to apply.
“Mini-Grant funds can be used to create a Walking School Bus, plan a Bike Rodeo, organize a Bike Train, create incentive programs encouraging walking &/or biking to school,or purchase new safety gear for school crossing guard programs,” the SDOT website states. Last year several Ballard-area schools benefited from this program. The Bike Commuters of Ballard HS, the Loyal Heights PTA “Undriving” program, North Beach PTA “Pedestrian Safety and Encouragement” program, the Salmon Bay Walking School Bus, and the West Woodland Bike Safety Training program all received grants. Applications (.pdf) must be submitted by October 30th.
Mini-grants to encourage walking/biking to school
![](https://www.myballard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024-My-Ballard-Tile-Ad-Troop-100.png")
Self-righteous little stinkers. How dare they ride bikes to school and get in my way. Probably going to start wearing spandex soon enuf. We should demand that they all get bicycling licenses and start paying taxes for crying out loud.
Seriously, though – I wonder whether the bicycle haters out there will extend their rage to the little tykes.
Interesting, as the new proposed boundaries place my kids in a school that is 1.7 miles from our house… instead of the one located less than 4 blocks away! That would have been a nice walking school bus to have. Instead the SDOT will have to deal with the damage from one more large (yellow) vehicle on our roads unnecessarily.
I'm guessing you would have gone to Whittier. We made the cut for the new boundary. Just barely. We only live 2 blocks away and our street is the southern border. Ridiculous! I hope that they will extend our border by the next November meeting.
Actually it's West Woodland, but yes–similar cutoff. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the notion that sending my kid UP and over Phinney Ridge (1.6 miles from our street) to go to BF day is somehow logical… I made sure to email all the right peeps, and one of our neighbors spoke for all of us at the meeting a couple weeks ago. We'll see!!
Another great post! We are big advocates for teaching children to have active lifestyles!
Yes, some of the new boundaries seem really strange, Whittier's new boundary will be much less walkable for a lot of children. I don't think any human beings actually looked at some of the new lines. Hardly neighborhood friendly.
Come to Loyal Heights Elementary Tuesday October 27, 7 pm and tell Directors Carr and Maier about these issues!
That photo is awesome. Who gets credit and what exactly is going on there?
That is a walking a school bus in magnolia.
What always amuses me is that so many parents perceive walking to school as being more dangerous than being driven to school. Overwhelming statistics say the exact opposite. If you really care about the safety of your child the last thing you should be doing is putting them in your car. On top of that making the kids walk might help keep them from ballooning out of shape and developing diabetes.
What amazes me is they need an incentive. What IS the matter with parents today?
It takes $1000 to make a plan to walk to school? And all this time I thought you just walked out the front door.