Who is Participating in Safe Routes to School? (SRTS?)

Check if your school is signed up for SRTS!  

Note: the blue dots are schools that have signed up for SRTS.  The green dots are schools that have participated in Bike Smart since 2017.  You can click on the layers to remove the Bike Smart layer.

What is Safe Routes to School (SRTS)?

Safe Routes to School is a movement that aims to make it safer and easier for students to walk, bike, and/or roll to school. Walking is one of the simplest, most effective, and most affordable strategies for kids and adults to build physical activity into their lives. One mile of walking translates to 2/3 of the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day. The benefits of walking extend beyond health. Studies show that there are links between physical activity and academic achievement, proving that active kids do better in school.

Local Motion is here to help your school become a great place for kids to develop those lifelong skills of choosing walking & biking to the places they want to go.

What does participating in Safe Routes to School (SRTS) mean for you and your school?

This is a partnership between Local Motion and your school, which means that we will work together to help your school develop a culture of walking and biking for the entire school community

What Local Motion offers:

Educational Support

• Walk/Bike Safety curricula and activities
• In-school helmet presentations by Local Motion for schools who engage in SRTS programming
• Earn free helmets for your school (as supplies last)

Event Support

• Regular newsletters with inspiration, ideas, and materials to support encouragement and education events at your school.
• Receive a “SRTS starter kit” which will include whatever you need to launch your program successfully
  • Banners or yard signs for Bike/Walk/Bus to School Days
  • Customizable posters
  • Email templates for recruitment of volunteers and coworkers
  • Student engagement materials 
    • Ex: stickers and other giveaways
    • Everything you need for a “Muddy Boot” inter-classroom walk/bike contest--including the “Muddy Boot” award!)
• Develop strategies for your school that will allow the inclusion of 100% of students (ex: students with disabilities, or students who are too far to walk or ride their bikes directly to the school)
• Support from a Regional Coordinator for your SRTS programming (only available in certain regions)
• Local Motion will organize or run an evaluation of the infrastructure around your school to determine safety issues for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Local Motion will also take the issues identified in the evaluation of the infrastructure around your school, and help elevate those issues to the attention of decision-makers and advocates in your town.   

What we’ll ask of your school:

• School commitment -  Principal buy-in
• SRTS Champion: Identify the person who will be your SRTS School Champion
  • School Champion role:
    • Be the point of contact for SRTS communications
    • Keep SRTS in the school consciousness throughout the year (put in newsletters, bulletin boards, etc) PTO meetings, announcements at assemblies, talking to kids and parents
    • Come up with a simple plan for your bike & walk program, keep track of progress & data collection (mentioned below)

• Data collection: Perform simple Travel Tallies & Family Surveys of how students go to school. 
  • SRTS has pre-formatted electronic versions of these surveys that make it very easy to distribute them to classrooms in your school
    • Travel Tallies & Family Surveys occur once or twice a year
    • Travel Tallies function in a similar manner to lunch count/attendance and only take a few minutes per classroom.
    • Local Motion will provide you with everything you need to be successful
• Provide an opportunity for Local Motion to present SRTS to PTO/A and staff 
  
  
• Run two (2) encouragement events (ex: walk & roll to school day, or a bus to school day, or a “muddy boot” inter-classroom competition)|
  
  
• Provide two (2) education events with a focus on bike safety (ex: Bike Smart & Walk Smart; bike education component at Field Day, bike/walk field trips, anti-idling campaigns, and more)
  • We partner with the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) who offer several related workshops that can 'count' for Safe Routes to School including:
    • Travel Training lessons to get elementary kids excited about clean transportation and specifically riding the bus. 
    • Conservation Kids can be rented as a kit with lesson plan, or a staff member can come do the workshop--it's a general "use less" through efficiency message that covers electricity, heat and transportation.
    • The Greening Transportation kit includes lesson plans and equipment to measure the impact of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and collect emissions from vehicles in long plastic sleeves.  This unit can be taught by a classroom teacher and supported by VEEP staff, or can have a VEEP staff member come in and do a Modeling Climate Science workshop with the students, and follow it up with the emissions bag demo. This one is best for middle school and up.
    • The EcoDriving workshop was developed with new drivers in mind that helps kids look at the impact of gas-powered transportation, and takes them through the benefits of bussing, biking, walking and carpooling.  The materials are available for teachers to use from the website, but VEEP can also send a staff member in to run the workshop.

Sign Up for Safe Routes to School!

Get a downloadable form of this webpage to share with your school here.