Portland Schools Bike Ped Safety Education Subcommittee

[Damon Yakovleff]

Greetings PBPAC,

At our meeting earlier this week, we decided to form an ad-hoc subcommittee to conduct research and provide a recommendation on providing bicycle pedestrian safety education within Portland Public Schools. I am happy to lead up this effort and am looking for volunteers who would like to assist with the effort.

I hope to keep the scope of this effort on the part of PBPAC to be reasonable. I think our goal should be to suggest a practical framework to the School Board, but not to be prescriptive as to all the details of the program.

Once we have a group together, we can put together a work plan. Generally, I think we can put something together over a few evening zoom meetings, working to gather information into a google document that can then be distilled into a recommendation.

Thanks and look forward to connecting on this!

Damon

[Sarah Cushman]

Hi Damon:

Thanks so much to you and everyone for your work on this!

As part of your process, I think you should be able to leverage the 2012 Portland School Board Policy "JLID - Biking and Walking to School": https://www.portlandschools.org/about/board-of-education/board-policies/policy/~board/book-j/post/jlid-biking-and-walking-to-school 

Especially the line, "The district shall conduct programs to make students aware of walking and biking rules and conditions and the safety reasons for supporting them."

The policy is a bit dated but came after a lot of hard work by the City team working on the federal Communities Putting Prevention to Work grant at that time (which also brought us Bruce Hyman as our first city Bike-Ped Coordinator). I was fortunate enough to work with them when I was consulting as the Southern Maine planner for Safe Routes to School with the Bicycle Coalition. And Chanda Turner, then School Health Coordinator for the district (now superintendent for MSAD 15 - Gray-New Gloucester), was our primary advocate within the schools. She fought hard for the "shall" language, instead of "may".

Jim Tasse at BCM then followed up with the district regarding bike-ped safety education train-the-trainer opportunities (attached). I can't recall what the BCM safety ed folks were able to make happen at the district from there, but you could reference the history. And I'm guessing you all have a decent sense of the current status of any safety ed work in the schools, whether by led by staff, BCM educators, or other community members. If you haven't already, you could check with Erik Da Silva, er...@bikemaine.org about any recent activities BCM may have been involved in.  

Hope that may be of use and thanks again for this group's continued important work!

Sarah

Sarah Cushman, she/her
Transportation Planner, Educator & Consultant
Cushman Transportation Consulting, LLC
Helping people have happy commutes, improving quality of life

Also, Faith Representative & Board Secretary, Moving Maine Network - Together, we’re building a movement that ensures transportation access and equity for every person in Maine.

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[Dan Bassett]

Hi All,

For those who don't know me, I'm Dan Bassett, the Deputy Director for the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. As I'm sure many of you know, BCM has a robust and active education program that works across the state, including the Portland Public School district. We focus on safety presentations, bike rodeos, instructional rides, and bike repair classes. This year alone we have served over 4200 students. We also have more than 30 volunteer instructors in almost every county in Maine who help us deliver this programming.

I am supportive of this group wanting to get more involved with bicycle safety education in Portland Public Schools, but I would ask that we do this together and collaboratively. We have a lot of experience in this world and have resources to support these efforts. We can also train and certify those who would want to deliver programming as well. 

I would like to invite those who are part of the education subcommittee to meet with the BCM education team sometime in the new year to see how best we can work together on this. 

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[Damon Yakovleff]

Dan, thanks so much for reaching out about this. One of the tasks for this effort will be to get an updated inventory of exactly what types of programming are being offered now, for what grade levels, and what (if any) mandate may be involved. It would be great if you could send us this information.

Meeting up early in the new year sounds like a great idea. In the meantime we can gather information and see who else wants to be involved. Lindsay, thanks for volunteering. And Sarah, thank you so much for that helpful background information! Hopefully we can build on those previous efforts. 

If anyone else wants to join to help round out the group please let me know. I hope by early next week we can start getting our information together and set a time for the first meeting. 

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[John Brooking]

Thanks for leading this, Damon. I would be happy to be on this subcommittee.

John Brooking

Cyclist, Cycling Educator, Technologist

https://www.facebook.com/CyclingSavvy4ME/, http://cyclingsavvy.org

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[Michael Dixon]

Thank you Damon, Sarah, John, and Dan.

I am out of bandwidth but please do not forget EECS, where an increasing number of kids are riding to and from school (maybe not so much today, but in the fall and spring), the two bike racks are now frequently overflowing (again, not today, but all fall), and the driving is crazier than ever (every day).

A heroic neighbor organized a bike skills training for kids last year with a BCM specialist (Thomas Hargrave, if I'm not mistaken), but I have not heard of any other recent trainings before or since.

If you don't mind keeping me looped in on this work, I'd appreciate it.

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