Maine Schools Receive National Center for Safe Routes to School Grants

The National Center for Safe Routes to School recently announced the selection of its newest mini-grant recipients — a program made possible through the federal Safe Routes to School program. Twenty-six schools, municipalities and organizations from across the country (including two in Maine) will receive $1,000 to support projects designed to encourage students and their families to safely walk and bicycle to school. The mini-grant activities, many of which are driven by students, will occur during the spring semester of the 2011-2012 school year.

Grants designated for Maine include:

• Ocean Avenue Elementary School (Portland, Maine) plans to focus its activities and efforts on creating a culture of walking and bicycling. The school and PTA will work with administrators to create a Walking School Bus and a weekly Walk and Wheel Wednesdays program. Online maps will be embedded on the school’s website detailing time and routes of Walking School Buses.  Students will map the  safest routes from home to school and will actively assess traffic concerns, existing infrastructure and environmental assets.
• Harrison Middle School (Yarmouth, Maine) plans to use OpenStreetMaps (OSM), a free global positioning system (GPS) mapping tool, in order to collect and share safe routes information. The “tracks” from the GPS devices will be uploaded to the OSM website, and students will learn to trace over their tracks and convert them into functional map elements in OSM. The middle school students will provide their peers and Harrison Middle School families with a useful tool that encourages bicycling and walking to school through the identification of routes.  Students will track travel mode changes by conducting a survey at the start and end of their OSM project.

Background information:

National Center for Safe Routes to School