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Editor's Notes

• #4: At the County level, Safe Routes is building and strengthening relationships and increasing the number of tangible and intangible support available to Safe Routes to School district level and school level program coordinators. Some of the new tangible offerings include a bike blender and our new k-5 educator guide. Also thanks to a grant from the Sequoia Healthcare District, I am working with a group of League Certified Instructors to implement and lead two middle school bike clubs aimed at helping middle school students develop destination riding cycling and leadership skills. All three of these items are viewable, orderable, and sign-upable for on our Safe Routes to School website.Also, like last year, we are providing promotional incentives for our three county-wide events, free workshops, and access to printed and electronic materials. All coordinators have access to a box.com folder which includes resources we’ve all created.To help you get an idea of activities, workshops and events that are being organized at the County level, I have included a copy of the 2013-2014 Safe Routes Calendar.
• #5: Of course, at the county level, we could offer the moon, but the project would go no where without district and school level program implementers. So with this new school year, we have 14 participating school districts and one private school. This means that despite not having the benefit of carry over dollars as we have started a new funding cycle, we are supporting 91 schools.In August, I met with the coordinators of the 14 districts and one private school program and has an in-depth orientation covering the expectations of program implementers. These guidelines were developed in large part, thanks to your input. In short, program implementers are expected to:Participate in one county-wide eventCollect evaluation data which means that they collect two days worth of student travel data and parent surveysThe submit three budget and activity reports to me-which in combination with my school visits allows me to monitor program implementation as outlined in their grant applicationAttend the four operations committee meetings which are designed to be a time for professional development and collaborationAnd lastly, develop a Safe Routes to School webpage, which we will be talking about in more depth later in this meeting.The final 2013-2014 grading criteria has been included for your reference. All grantees will be evaluated at the end of the 2013-2014 year to help me determine which districts may benefit from additional support and identify which districts or schools just may not be quite ready to move forward with additional projects.
• #6: To support districts with their project implementation, we have brought on a few new educational providers. We also cut back on the number of approved engineering firms-because engineering firms are generally only asked to conduct walk/bike audits and develop route maps and the number of districts interested in these services was relatively small, we opted to bring on the top two ranking firms from the Request for Qualifications ProcessThe additional education providers were brought on to help accommodate the large volume of education requests that come in at the start of the school year and from March-June. All of the providers are very qualified and each bring a specialty that can align well with a school or district’s specific needs. Peninsula Y Bike was also recently awarded a grant by the Spare the Air Youth of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, so they are coordinating a middle school bike club after school at Bowditch and Borel. SVBC was also recently awarded a grant from Spare the Air Youth and will be providing up to 10 family bike classes over the next two years in San Mateo County.
• #7: As I imagine everyone in this room knows, International Walk to School Day is coming on Wednesday, October 9. The basic event is students, parents, and community stakeholders meet at a predetermined location at a predetermined time and walk to school. When children arrive, they are welcomed and receive an incentive for their participation. This all began in 1997 in Great Britain and in 2000, the United States and Canada joined in the fun making for International Walk to School Day. In 2011, 40 million children from 40 countries participated.The county supports school events by providing posters, an eraser incentive, templates in the box.com folder, training, and participation collection resources-so the tools to gather the on the ground counts and a website to enter the data at. The other thing the county provides support with is recruiting and placing special guests-so on that note, is anyone interested in joining a walk event? An invitation is included-please share the invitation and if you’d like to join an event, give me a call or send over an e-mail.
• #8: Some highlights:The City of Belmont is adopting a resolution to support IWTSD on Sept 24 at their board meetingThe City of San Mateo will be airing several events related to IWTSD on the local channel, PenTV:-Oct 3 the Beresford Walk to School Day-Oct 7 Ken Chin's report on Safe Routes in the City and the School District and the adopting of a resolution in support of Safe Routes -October 9 either or both the Baywood and Horall walk events.College Park of San Mateo is also looking for special guests for their walk event on October 9.Ravenswood City School District/EPA has  events at Belle Haven and Green Oaks that Mefula Fairley of SMCOE will be joining.City Councilmembers will be joining walk events at Milllbrae School District SchoolsDr. Gary Waddell will be joining the Belmont-Redwood Shores school district in a walk eventPacifica School District is inviting local celebrities to be crossing guards at every school site to make sure people who don't usually walk are safe and has shared press releases with the local paper.Other fun ideas include music-play a CD or having a band welcome kids, drawing chalk feet to direct where students should gather to be welcomed by a celebrity at the start of school, or in Belmont-Redwood Shores, last year, to get kids to come early, they organized parent and staff led PE stations, so once kids arrived, they got to engage in fun games. Some song ideas and PE station ideas are included. Also at a few school sites, club leads like Girl Scout leaders had their troops make posters and banners to carry during the walk
• #9: As you may have noticed from the evaluation criteria earlier, Safe Routes webpages should include one page that lists event dates, contact information for the coordinator, suggested route information and it should note C/CAG is the source of funding. This can be a static page, meaning that this information goes up once and is never changed or it can be a page that it updated frequently. I would like to take a moment to chat about route information. The addendum to the agreement specifically notes that route information shall be posted to the extent possible. From what I understand, some districts are concerned about the liability with posting route information, so route information can be hidden behind a password protected portal or a district may deem that it simply isn’t possible because one of the parents of the children is a registered sex offender. So, posting route information is up to the discretion of the district, but at the very least, there should be a conversation to explore the feasibility.Ideally each school will have its own Safe Routes page, but I also recognize that may not be realistic. So, at bare minimum, every district should have a Safe Routes Page and if schools are up to it, it would be great if school web pages could direct parents to the district page.A few districts have already started, so I’d like to spend the rest of the meeting giving you an opportunity to look at pages and start evaluating what’s working and what’s not because in this technology driven age, having an accessible webpage is great PR that can capture an audience and save a lot of e-mails and phone calls.
• #10: In a moment, you’re going to organize yourselves in dyads and triads around a laptop. The laptops have a similar powerpoint presentation already loaded, so you’ll have the opportunity to just click on a district’s name and it will take you to the district’s Safe Routes to School page.Once you’re on the page you’d like, please look over the page, chat about it and take notes about what you like, potential improvements, and potential additions.A note taking form is provided, but you are free to use whatever note taking format you like.After 10 minutes of review, we’ll share out which will give me some wonderful guidance and feedback to help support the coordinators.THE LINK TO LOADhttp://www.slideshare.net/dainalujan/policy-advisory-committee-activity
• #11: These are the district Safe Routes pages you’ll have the opportunity to review.Are there questions about what you will be doing?