The City of Belmont, NC Department of Transportation, Page Primary School, Belmont Central Elementary School, and Belmont Middle School have partnered on a Safe Routes to School Program. Safe Routes to School promotes walking or riding bicycles to elementary and middle school through education, encouragement, engineering, enforcement, and evaluation.
The City and these three schools are completing an Action Plan to identify reasons why students walk or ride bicycles to school or why they don't. It identifies ways to increase active travel to school, either through incentives to parents and students, creating walking school buses, or through sidewalk, bikeway, and intersection improvements.
The City of Belmont is in its second year of a two-year Fit Community grant to promote active travel to school at Belmont Central and Belmont Middle School. This grant has paid for the new sidewalk through Davis Park and crosswalks to connect the two schools to Davis Park. Parents can now drop off students at Davis Park and let them walk on a sidewalk to either school.
October 6, 2010 was International Walk to School Day and Belmont Central Elementary School had a very successful event. Over 230 students walked or rode bicycles at least part of the way to school! Two school buses stopped at First Foursquare Church to allow their riders to get out and walk the rest of the way to school. Pictures from this event are on the City's Facebook page.
The students had a great time and got some exercise before school began. The normal traffic congestion at the school was noticeably reduced with so many students walking to school.
Belmont Central Elementary is now in its third year of its WOW Wednesdays, a yearlong program encouraging students to walk or bike all or part of the way to school on Wednesdays. Parents are encouraged to walk or ride bikes with their children or to park at First Foursquare Church and let their children walk the last 1/4 mile to the school building.
Adult volunteers will be available to ensure that the students arrive safely to school. Prizes will be given throughout the school year for students who participate.
Almost 100 students participated in the first WOW Wednesday on September 2, 2009, including Kendrick Boehlke, who is shown above riding to school with her dad Matt. Also shown is Belmont Parish Nurse Cheryl Fleming, who assisted with the WOW Wednesday by directing students to the school building and handing out apples to participants.