Mid Valley Elementary School in Odell, Oregon and part of the Hood River County School District, applied for and received one of the federal Safe Routes to School grants which are granted through Oregon’s Safe Routes to School Program.

Mid Valley Elementary School's interest in the Safe Routes to School program came about after families and community members expressed concerns about local streets and lack of safe walking and/or biking locations on or around the school site. Mid Valley Elementary along with the Odell community hopes to increase the "walk and bikeability" on and around the school through increased infrastructure, non-infrastructure, education, and enforcement needs.

Mid Valley's SRTS program has these focus areas:
1) Increasing the opportunities within Hood River for children and adults to access streets, pedestrian, and/or bicycle safety education or skills,
2) Providing organized school and community action to encourage walking and/or bicycling to and from school and within the community;
3) Promoting enforcement for crosswalk safety; traffic speed, school zone laws and unsafe driving.

The BTA’s Statewide Youth Programs Manager, Lynne Mutrie went to Odell and taught 9 city and school staff and community members the first half of our Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety train-the-trainer workshop. Lynne will return to Mid Valley Elementary later in the spring to finish the training. The grant’s principal and Mid Valley Elementary teacher, Sarah Boadway wants to see more children walking and biking to school. Giving kids more opportunity to walk and bike to school and throughout their neighborhood is a benefit to the whole community now and in the future.

One of the projects to educate the parents is a Curriculum Information Night where parents and students attend together. One of the variety of topics was bike helmet safety. In this class parents with their children investigated a bike helmet, watched the instructors demonstrate how to fit a bike helmet properly, and then created a helmet for an egg to keep the egg from cracking when dropped from a ladder. The egg helmet drop showed the importance of keeping our "egg-head" safe from falls by wearing a helmet.

As part of this project in their safe routes program, a fleet of Giant Bicycles is being purchased to teach the BTA’s Bicycle Safety program in schools throughout the district. This partnership between Giant, Discover Bicycles in Hood River, the school district and Mid Valley Elementary shows the community’s commitment to the safety and health of their children.

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