The 2022-2023 school year has been the most successful year to date for our Education and Safe Routes To School program. We’ve taught more students (over 900!) at more schools (12) than ever before! We’ve supported more schools in holding off-campus bike, walk, and roll to school events and have begun building conversations with parents at several schools about starting ongoing walking school buses or bicycle trains.
We’ve set the bar high for the next school year and we received great news this Spring that will enable us to keep the momentum going. First, Durham County awarded Bike Durham with a $175,000 grant of federal funds to expand our programming over the next two years. Then, Durham Public Schools was awarded federal grant funds through State’s Safe Routes To School program. The combination of these resources puts us in a position to hire more staff to deepen our relationships with individual schools and with DPS administration. We expect to make great strides in educating students in biking and walking safety that more and more will be able to practice on their way to school.
2022-2023 Recap
We had ambitious plans at the beginning of the school year: offer our 4-weeks-long program to students at 12 DPS Elementary and to have 6 end-of-class celebrations throughout the year. The response from Physical Education (PE) coaches and principals was tremendous, and we held classes at the following elementary schools: Merrick Moore, E.K. Powe, W.G Pearson, Pearsontown, Eastway, Fayetteville, Lakewood, Y.E. Smith, Glenn, C.C. Spaulding, Burton, and Eno Valley.
Due to our consistently lousy weekend weather conditions, we were only able to hold four end-of-class celebrations. These events are celebrations of bike safety activities, where all students at the schools, and their families are invited to participate on a Saturday. We always love seeing those that just attended the bike safety class program take the lead in showing others what they’ve learned: peer-to-peer instruction at its finest!
All of the PE coaches have been super to work with, however there are two standouts - Coach Watson at Eastway and Coach Wilson at Merrick-Moore - who we showered with love and praise at our first ever PE teacher's recognition event. Durham Public Schools, the City of Durham, and the Bike Durham staff celebrated the efforts made by our community school leaders to bring bike safety classes to their classrooms, gyms, and playgrounds.
This school year was also good in terms of Bike, Walk & Roll events, as in October 2022, 19 Elementary schools held events, celebrating the benefits of biking and walking to school, and the importance of safe access to the school infrastructure. These events also help to establish and strengthen social connections between families, schools, and local businesses, reminding us of the crucial and central role of a school in a safe, healthy, and vibrant community.
We feel safe to say that what we are doing in Durham is groundbreaking. We are pushing to expand our programs to as many schools as possible; to expose as many students, teachers, and families to more than just bike safety. We are looking to engage Durham residents of all ages and empower them to walk, bike, and ride transit more often.
Great things happen when riding bikes and our students can certainly prove it. Nothing feels as cheerful and hopeful as seeing a young student progress through our course, go from hesitancy and uncertainty with balancing on a bike to being able to ride with confidence and to show their friends how far they have gone in such a short period.
Finally, we are so grateful to the City of Durham for selecting us to manage this program over the past two years, to Jen McDuffie (former board member and volunteer extraordinaire) for having done this work for years and for having the foresight to assist the City in submitting a grant application, and to donors to last year’s Pedals to Possibilities campaign that made our program expansion possible this Spring.