This blog is part of our series chronicling our work with a Chicago Public Schools program called Healthy CPS. Read more about the project here.
At Mary Lyon Elementary in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood of Chicago, active transportation is a community effort.
Like Funston Elementary, Mary Lyon has a "wellness team" that works to increase staff and student wellness.
Mary Lyon also has a well-established "parent patrol" that assists students as they arrive and depart school each day, making sure they do so as safely as possible.
Since the parent patrol knows the neighborhood they have been able to recommend ways to make arrival and dismissal procedures safer for all students.
Physical education teachers are also an important part of the active transportation puzzle at Mary Lyon.
This spring, over 350 students received instruction around safe walking and biking during their PE classes at Mary Lyon, and there are plans to expand the program next year.
In partnership with Active Trans, Mary Lyon students joined nearly 3,000 students in 14 schools across CPS who received some form of walking and biking education in PE class during the 2013-2014 school year.
In future years we hope to see these numbers expand significantly so that every student in CPS receives this type of instruction.
Through the combined work of the wellness team, parent patrol and PE teachers, Mary Lyon has done a great job of keeping students safe while walking and biking to and from school.
The school’s new Safe Routes Action Plan will guide the efforts of making active transportation an integral part of students’ travel choices in the years to come.
(Additional past blog posts in this series not already linked above include the topics of engagement and administrative leadership.)