Allan Appel Photo
Luis Estrada’s mom drives him to Fair Haven School each day even though they live just four blocks away on Atwater Street. He said he’d like to walk. The city now has a half-million dollars to convince Luis’s mom — and scores of other parents — to say yes.
Luis (pictured with teacher Hillary Walsh) is in third-grade at Fair Haven. Officials held an event there Wednesday to announce they’ve received a $500,000 federal Safe Routes to School grant. The grant’s aimed altering parental attitudes about walking, as well as calming traffic on nearby streets.
The money will pay for a half mile of new sidewalks, two speed tables on Exchange Street behind the school, two new crosswalks on Grand, one at Atwater and one at Bright, as well as bump-outs and a general narrowing of the avenue.
Wednesday morning, the mover-and-shaker behind the grant, former Fair Haven alderwoman Erin Sturges-Pascale, was on hand, along with city officials, to celebrate with hundreds of potential kindergarten to third-grade walkers.
(Click here for a previous story about Safe Routes to Schools “parades” organized last year to pump up for the grant.)
Principal Kim Johnsky said that approximately 200 of the school’s 640 kids walk to school. More choose to walk home following after-school programs that can stretch until 6 o’clock.
She predicted the grant will improve those numbers. The current crosswalk near C‑Town is inadequate and often obscured by cars illegally parked, she said, making the crossing particularly dangerous, she said.
Johnsky sends her kids regularly to the Atwater Senior Center and nearby Mary Wade Home for projects; safer crossings will help kids do such community service as well
Johnsky said that third-grader Miguel Rosario (on the right in photo) would like to walk next year but his mom won’t let him until the new crosswalks are in place, along with other measures to reduce speeding in the straight stretch in front of the school.
Most of the walkers at the school are from the upper grades of the K‑8; you have to be a fourth-grader to have permission to walk alone. Another factor affecting the growth of the walking population is that school system rules permit bus pick up for any child who lives more than a mile from his or her school.
With 90 percent of Fair Haven K‑8’s student body living within three miles of the school, there is great potential to increase walkers, and bicylists.
Currently one bike rack is available for parking. More kids would bike if the two-wheelers could be secured, according to Sturgis-Pascale and gym teacher Travis Gale. That bike rack was installed during the Safe Routes to School grant-writing process. There were no bicyclists when Sturgis-Pascale and Gale did the survey for the grant a year and a half ago; now approximately 20 kids ride.
Gale was Sturgis-Pascale’s “champion” in the grant application.
The feds didn’t want just to provide for new bricks and mortar safety features without knowing teachers and principals were ready to help change attitudes. “They don’t want just sidewalks,” said Sturgis-Pascale, “but persons to change behavior.” That’s Gale.
“Who wants to walk to school with Mr. Gale?” Mr. Gale asked the kids in attendance at Wednesday’s event. As all hands shot up, he talked about developing “teacher trains” at the school: Getting teachers to meet groups of kids out in the community and escort them the balance of distance to the school.