Hello Neighbors!

Vergennes Union Elementary School is now a member of the Vermont Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program and will be participating in the National Walk & Bike to School Day this Wednesday, May 10. Students along with parents, teachers and community leaders will be walking and rolling to school between 7:15-8:00am, buses will be dropping students from farther afield at the St. Peter's Church parking lot and we will have community crossing guards at key points, such as Main Street/22A at Water Street and Green Street, in addition to our usual crossing guard coverage at Green, King St./New Haven Road junction. We are asking parents and guardians to consider alternatives to private vehicle transportation, if possible.

Our Vergennes SRTS team and the school administration are working to promote healthy habits that improve health and increase the appeal of walking and bicycling to school. However, fifty-five percent of parents nationally who reported not allowing their children to walk or bicycle to school identified the number of cars along the route to school as a significant issue in their decision-making process.

Walk & Bike to School Day events like ours work to create safer routes for walking and bicycling and emphasize the importance of issues such as increasing physical activity among children, pedestrian safety, traffic congestion, concern for the environment and building connections between families, schools and the broader community.

One-time events like Walk & Bike to School Day can increase the number of students who walk or bicycle to school even weeks after the day of the event and they often turn into regularly occurring walking and bicycling programs, which over time can get significantly more students walking and bicycling to school. This is certainly our hope here in Vergennes. BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP!

SAFETY: IT TAKES A VILLAGE (or, in our case, a small city)

Walking and bicycling need to be safe and accessible transportation options. This means creating safe environments for students of all abilities (plus teaching safety skills to walkers, bicyclists and drivers). Driver behaviors, like speeding and distracted driving, can undermine safety. Attentive drivers traveling at slower speeds can saves lives.

Some facts to think about:

**Speeding reduces a driver’s peripheral vision, increases the distance needed to stop and increases the severity of injury to a pedestrian in a crash. A car traveling 40 mph requires 300 feet, or an entire football field, to come to a complete stop. At 30 mph a car needs 200 feet to stop and at 20 mph requires only 100 feet. Higher speeds exponentially increase the chances that a driver will hit a pedestrian crossing or along the roadway and that the injuries sustained will be life changing (brain injury, physical impairment) or life ending.

**Distracted driving draws a driver’s vision from the road, hands off the steering wheel or mind off of the act of driving. Examples include talking or texting on the phone and eating while driving. Distracted driving increases the braking distance needed to safely avoid pedestrians and bicyclists. Multitasking while driving also slows cognitive ability, processing and reaction time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message and for being conscientious of some of our community's youngest citizens during school commuting hours, in particular.

Happy Spring!

Facts and Statistics cited here can be found at http://www.walkbiketoschool.org