Governor Pat Quinn issued a proclamation today designating Tuesday, May 7th, 2013, as Crossing Guard Appreciation Day in the state of Illinois!  Check it out here.

Crossing Guard Appreciation Day is traditionally held on the first Tuesday of May each year, to recognize and celebrate the invaluable service that crossing guards offer to our communities.  Crossing guards play an important role in the safety of children walking to and from school. Their presence and hard work help to make the trip to school safer, encouraging more students to feel comfortable walking to school more often.

Be on the lookout for an opportunity to nominate your local crossing guard for recognition of outstanding service.  By celebrating Crossing Guard Appreciation Day, we thank our crossing guards for a year of tireless work to keep our children safe!

We will soon be hiring to fill positions for the end of the Safe Routes season and the Bicycling Ambassadors 2013 season.  For position details and application instructions, visit the Active Transportation Alliance Jobs and Internships page.

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health recently published a study showing that the Safe Routes to School program in New York contributed to a decrease in traffic-related injuries for school-aged children by 44%.  From the Mailman School’s website:

The national Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program was funded by Congress in 2005 in an effort to create safe environments for American children to walk or bike to school.  Has the program been effective? In New York City, most definitely, according to a new study conducted at the Mailman School of Public Health. Researchers found that the annual rate of injury to school-age pedestrians ages 5 to 19 fell 44% during the peak times for walking to school in neighborhoods where the program was implemented. Significantly, the injury rate did not drop in parts of the city where the SRTS safety program was not in place.

Findings of the report are published online in Pediatrics.

The researchers analyzed motor vehicle crash data for 169,000 pedestrian injuries between 2001 and 2010 for different age groups and neighborhoods with and without SRTS interventions to assess the program’s effectiveness….

“Our data show that interventions to make the built environment safer can greatly reduce injuries to children as they walk to school”, says the lead author of the study, Charles DiMaggio, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology and research director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia.

Check out the article here.

From their press release on Nov. 27th:

The National Center for Safe Routes to School is pleased to announce the release of The Walking School Bus Program: A Primer and First Steps, an online audio/video training program that provides strategies and tips for planning a Walking School Bus program.

Safety is one of the most common reasons for parents to be reluctant to allow their children to walk to school.  Walking School Bus programs address safety concerns for families who live within walking or bicycling distance of school by providing adult supervision.

A Walking School Bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults. It can be as informal as two families taking turns walking their children to school or as formal as a well-planned walking route with meeting points, a timetable and a regularly rotated schedule of trained volunteers.

“More than providing safety, a Walking School Bus is fun for kids as they explore their world and interact with friends on the way to school,” said Nancy Pullen-Seufert , associate director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School.  ‘Kids love it!  And adults love it too, they get a lot out of it.”

The Walking School Bus Program: A Primer and First Steps is available online at

http://apps.saferoutesinfo.org/training/walking_school_bus.

Check it out for your school!  Visit our Resources page for more info, and contact the Ambassadors if you’d like a Safe Routes Ambassadors ToolKit for even more Chicago-specific resources.

The Safe Routes Ambassadors currently have schedule openings beginning January 7th, 2013.  To arrange a visit to your 2nd or 5th grade classrooms, please see our Request the Safe Routes Ambassadors page to find all the forms you need to schedule us for this coming semester.

Feel free to request a date with the new editable request form and email it to us, or for a list of available dates please email the program coordinator at cody.mcchane@activetrans.org or call 312-744-3019.