(Photo courtesy Theresa Beaulieu, from 2013 “Denny-Lincoln Classic” ride)
It’s a matter of health, safety, and fun! Denny International Middle School parent Theresa Beaulieu is trying to get more kids on bikes – and is hoping you’ll chip in:
For the last couple of years, I have been working hard in trying to get more students to ride their bikes to school. We have a very long backup of cars that pull in and drop their kids off in the front of the school every morning and I would like to see less cars and more bikes and walkers. We have been awarded Safe Routes to School mini-grants through SDOT for the last two years that have given us the funds to host Doughnut and Fruit days for kids who ride their bikes. These days are to encourage them. We also were able to have our new annual Denny-Lincoln Classic family bike ride that we started last year, that included t-shirts for each rider, designed by a sixth grader.
I have been working with the Major Taylor Project coordinator to get a cycling after-school program started to teach students the rules of the road, how to ride safely, and bicycle maintenance. This would be a similar program that they have going on at Chief Sealth, our shared-campus high school. This could also lead into an earn-a-bike program in the winter months. The idea is to start the kids off at Denny on Mountain bikes and then they could transition to the road bikes they have at Sealth. I was encouraged after reading the reports about the Kimball Elementary teacher who raised over 20K in funds to purchase the whole school with Seahawks jerseys so I started my own GoFundMe site. … Our school consists of many students from low-income families who don’t have access to bikes. This would give those kids and other kids the opportunity to ride. The bikes we want to purchase will be used for the after-school program and offered for the Denny-Lincoln Classic bike ride to students who have taken the after-school class. They would be stored at the school and maintained by the students themselves.
So if one community could raise $25,000 for jerseys, certainly ours can muster $8,000 for bikes! Here’s the link again. And there’s a deadline now – the money needs to be raised by March 15th to get the program started this spring.
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