Stanton Iowa first caught Iowa Safe Routes to School attention when we were looking at communities that had trail systems for an idea we had for the annual Iowa Safe Routes to School Conference. What caught our attention was that Stanton is a town of just shy of 700 people and they are working on a bike trail to go around the community.
So naturally, when they asked us to help them improve their biking and walking around the school we were more than glad to help. The first thing we did was work with community leaders to do a walk audit along Halland Street which goes from the Elementary school to Anderson Park. The school often takes trips down to the park for the kids to play. Of course, we found some opportunities for improvement. The major issue deteriorated sidewalk and some areas that lacked a sidewalk. The participants were eager to learn and hopeful that changes could be made.
In addition, we also did a one-day travel tally with the K-6th graders. A travel tally if you are not familiar with them is when someone counts how each student traveled to school that day. In this case, teachers were willing to ask the students at the beginning of class.
Now that the walk audit is complete the next step is to complete the written findings to the community. Then we with community support Iowa Safe Routes to School will hopefully help with encouraging more kids to bike and walk to school and co-host a bike rodeo with the community.
Stay tuned for more updates from Stanton. They might be a small community but they are all about big ideas and building community. We look forward to helping them grow.