Program Tools

Sustain a Program

Now that a program is up and running, what's needed to keep it going and help it grow? Key strategies for keeping a program going include:

• Identifying additional program champions.
• Letting people know about the successes: Get visibility for activities through local media and school communications and publicize your activities. Making the work fun and positive makes it more likely that people will want to continue and others will want to become involved.
• Encouraging policy changes: These might be school, school district or local government policies that support children walking and bicycling to school. For example, local planning departments may promote new school construction within walking and bicycling distance of residential areas. School district adoption of a safety curriculum means that the pedestrian and bicycle education will continue to be provided to children.
• Creating a permanent committee: A permanent committee within the PTA, school site council or other group means that SRTS will continue to receive attention and energy.

This brief describes how integrating SRTS into comprehensive planning can help define the local government’s role in supporting safe walking and bicycling to school. Download a copy of the brief Webinar - Integrating Safe Route to School into the Fabric of Your Community: The Role of the Comprehensive Plan

Learn how integrating SRTS considerations into comprehensive planning can help define the local government’s role in supporting safe walking and bicycling to school.

Download a copy of the webinar School Bicycling and Walking Policies: Addressing Policies that Hinder and Implementing Policies that Help This tip sheet outlines helpful tips for addressing a school's bicycling and walking policies. Download a copy of the tip sheet Webinar - Get Inspired: Ideas to Refresh, Re-energize, and Reframe Safe Routes to School Join Mark Fenton, a widely recognized and vocal advocate for the importance of walking and bicycling in communities, for a big picture look at the current state of Safe Routes to School. What have we achieved? Where are we headed? How can we get there? And how does SRTS fit into the larger healthy communities movement? Download a copy of the webinar The Community Connection: School Travel Plans and Building Community Support In this webinar we learn about two different approaches to travel planning, starting at the school district level in Ohio as compared to a small town approach in Vermont. Both cases demonstrate the value of engaging the larger community during the planning process. Dowload a copy of the webinar Keys to a Successful SRTS Program: Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers In this sixty minute webinar, Wendi Kallins, Director of the Marin County SRTS Program, provides tips and tricks on where to find volunteers, how to recruit them and importantly, how to retain and keep them motivated once they are on board. Lourdes Perez, Director of the Ceres Partnership for Healthy Children, will then provide insight and tips for successfully recruiting non-English speaking parents. Dowload a copy of the webinar