FIRST PTO MEETING OF THE DECADE:
Our inaugural 2010 PTO meeting will be next week. Wednesday, January 13th to be precise, from 6-8pm in the library. All are welcome and there will be childcare and pizza provided. RSVP to Barbara Leopold (bleopold@bsdvt.org or 864-8477) for childcare. See you there.
SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL PROGRAM:
Champlain Elementary's Safe Routes to School Program is looking for a few good people to work toward improving safety, and encourage more families to safely walk and bicycle to school and around the community. In the process, Champlain's Safe Routes to School Program can help reduce congestion and improve health and environment, making our community more livable for everyone.
Champlain's Safe Routes to School Program needs volunteers to help with the following activities, tasks, and events:
1. Organize and work with Local Motion our grant partner to hold a parent educational evening about children's pedestrian/biking safety, and organizing walking school buses. Parent surveys for two years have indicated the main reasons parents cite for their children not walking to school are safety and convenience. Ideally, this event would happen in February or March.
2. Two parent teams to walk designated territories of Champlain's district to identify sidewalks, crosswalks, crossing guards, and areas that are barriers to walking and biking safely (e.g. there is a need for a crossing guard, need for a sidewalk, better markings, signs, etc). This information will become a critical component of our School Travel Plan -- a requirement of our current grant, a requirement for our infrastructure grant, and will serve Local Motion and the City of Burlington. Local Motion would like the work on these maps to be completed as soon as possible, ideally during January and February.\
3. Volunteer to help with Way to Go Week during the first week of May -- a week long celebration of walking and biking at Champlain to correspond with the state-wide commuter challenge to find alternative ways to get to school and work. (see http://www.waytogovt.org/). This would require more effort in April to prepare for the week.
4. Become a committee member and help with all of the above as well as take an active role in planning next year's events and activities for the Safe Routes to School Non-Infrastructure Grant and our first Infrastructure Grant Applications.
If you are interested or would like to learn more about the Safe Routes to School Program, please contact Leslyn Hall at Leslyn.Hall@gmail.com or by calling 802-859-9253. Thanks, we can use the help.