SPRINGFIELD PUBLIC SCHOOLS WELLNESS COMMITTEE MEETING
SPRINGFIELD, OR 97477 Wednesday, January 21, 2015 3:30 PM
MINUTES
A meeting of the Springfield Public Schools Wellness Committee Meeting was held Wednesday, January 21, 2015.
Attendance: Gary Cole, Diana Abell, Emma Newman, Laura Pavlat, Trena Jayne, Tom Hambly and Esmeralda Carlos
1. WELCOME/AGENDA REVIEW
2. Review of Minutes
Minutes were approved.
3. Safe Routes to Schools
Emma Newman a member of the Wellness Committee since November 2014 presented to the group the Springfield Safe Routes to School Program. Ms. Newman provided a copy of the 2013-2014 Safe Routes to School Program Summary and a copy of the current 2014-2015 Safe Routes to School Policy (Draft). This program encourages students to walk and bike to and from school and could bring social events, fun competitions, incentives, etc. This could involve engineering improvements, an infrastructure change, changes on school site or city level for transportation, education on proper use of roads as a pedestrian, a bicyclist user, skate boarder or scooter, anything to encourage healthy active transportation for students.
Ms. Newman started working with a School District grant and works specific schools each year; last year she focused on Agnes Stewart, Hamlin, Elizabeth Page and Maple. This year the focus schools are Centennial, Guy Lee, Yolanda, and Briggs. Ms. Newman is bringing together stake holder groups at the schools listed, looking at the different areas of safe routes to schools and asking how is walking and biking at your school? What strategies can be implemented in different areas to make it easier, safer and more fun to walk and bike to school. An aspect of the program is evaluations, now starting to get year after year transportation data, a report from each school for each year that contains information on how many students are walking, biking, how many are taking a family vehicle, car pooling and riding a school bus. This data is collected from a Safe Routes to school survey, one that is performed in the class room and another that is sent home for parents to complete. Parents have the opportunity to express concerns and feedback on specific locations that they might not think are safe. For example last year via the survey a number of parents were concerned about the intersection on 42nd and Daisy Street. With this it rises to a priority that there is infrastructure that needs improvement and working with the city planners, along with funding from ODOT for that corridor they are doing a bicycle boulevard corridor improvement with traffic devise control on 42nd and Daisy.
The Education Program had both pedestrian safety at 2nd grade level and some at 3rd grade level. This program is a two day course , first day in the classroom practicing what is an intersection, who is a pedestrian, how do you get around your community, how do you identify where it is safe to walk and where it’s not, where should you cross? Pedestrian safety was taught in three classes at Centennial Elementary last year and this year with a grant from the Springfield Education Foundation, Ms. Newman is scheduled to teach nine of the twelve elementary schools this school year and going for a full program next year. The second day of this two day course is walking the school neighborhood with the students to practice walking and figure out where to walk and how to cross. The bike safety education is modeled from what’s been going on in the 4J Eugene School District. Hamlin Middle School has had the bike safety education for thirteen to fourteen years now. This course is a ten day course which Ms. Newman describes as drivers ed 101 but on bikes. Students practice bike control skills. The last two days of the course volunteers come in to take the students on a neighborhood ride that takes the students onto the streets, this helps observe good positioning, signaling, checking for cars, how to ride hills, working with stop and yield signs, and all the different elements of street designs. This helps the staff to see how students have progressed.
Springfield has their own bicycle fleet this year; it’s a 20 x 8 ½ x 8 foot trailer that currently holds 42 bicycles. They were manufactured on west 11th in Eugene, including a teacher bike that enables you to have people on the back of it. In case a student gets a flat tire (this allows the student to ride on the bike to get them back to school). Ms. Newman is working on partnering with Willamalane to bring some of their instructors into the program. The vision is to have the bike fleet available to instructors to offer a bike camp as a summer program to students. This year bike safety will be offered to all Springfield Middle Schools. This is a P.E. elective offered to Middle School students.
Ms. Newman supports and encourages schools throughout the District by fostering leadership and having staff contacts at each school to help coordinate. Guylee, Elizabeth Page, Briggs, Hamlin and Springfield High School had a national bike challenge month last year in May. Some other schools also participated in a walk and bike day to school in October last year. It’s a one day event in the fall and a month long challenge in the spring for the schools that want to get involved.
Free bike repair was available to students last year in the spring and two events in the fall this school year. One of the events was held at Briggs Middle School, which was open to the District. At this event about thirty bicycles were tuned up from Hutches Bike Shop. Hutches is a professional bike shop that volunteers to help, and with a partnership with the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (a city advisor group), they help gather volunteers to do some of the basic bike repairs like, lubricating chains or pumping up tires.
Ms. Newman is excited to see the program grow and has been forming relationships by connecting with city planning. She has been working with the school zone flashers when those aren’t working. She is now the contact person for the District. She then reports to the city so they can get them fixed. At Thurston High School the city is installing cross walks with flashing beacons at 58th and A Street. The school is also doing some onsite improvements.
Ms. Newman is part of a regional bike parking assessment study; she completed an assessment of the district and graded each school based on what type of bike rack, how many bikes it held, location of the rack, is it covered, is there access to the bike parking, and lots of other elements. This all gets combined and determined who the priority schools are to improving the bike parking facilities. Twelve new stable bike racks were installed; these racks were provided by ODOT for completing the action plan development at Hamlin.
Ms. Newman would like to work with the Wellness Committee to draft a Policy on Safe Routes to Schools. This will come with some administrative rules and procedures within the Transportation Department. The idea is to incorporate State rules but add to an articulate it. A copy of the template from Change Lab Solutions and Safe Routes to School National Partnership was handed out to the group at this meet. Change Lab Solutions is a group of lawyers and attorneys who know the legal side of things really well who what to see a better healthier world. They partnered with Safe Routes to School and did research on what sort of policies would be appropriate. Most of the language in the document presented by Ms. Newman was gathered from their workbook with options to customize and make it fit the District. As a group the committee members took turns reading sections of the document presented by Ms. Newman. The group will continue to discuss this topic at the next Wellness Meeting.
4. UPDATE TOTAL WORKER HEALTH/SIM4 TRAINING
Ms. Pavlat reported on The Total Worker Heath/SIM4 project. Laura Pavlat, Gary Cole, Mike Schlosser, and Chris Reiersgaard have participated in a day long training on body mechanics, learning how to incorporate wellness and safety together to leverage the work that is being done to impact the overall wellness of the employee and to help while at work or at home. Consultants from SAIF took pictures of Springfield Employees to use for future training for staff. Pacific Source is working on posters that fortify the message at work at home or at play.
5. ADJOURNMENT
Meeting was adjourned at 4:55 pm.
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