2016 Bike to School Challenge: awards announced!

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Students of Hazel Wolf K-8 proudly display their Bike to School Day posters. 

Thank you and congratulations to all the student riders and school coordinators across Washington who participated in our 2016 Bike to School Challenge!

Elementary, middle and high school students had an overwhelmingly successful month of riding this May and the numbers show it:

  • Bike to School Day student participation was up 35 percent from last year.
  • Participating elementary students in 51 schools throughout the region rode more than 620,000 minutes during the month. We were thrilled to welcome 18 new elementary schools to the challenge this year.
  • Thornton Creek Elementary in Seattle led the challenge with students riding 70,284 minutes total, winning this year’s Golden Pedal Award!

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By the end of the month our middle and high school challengers took 3,070 trips, biked 11,556 miles and saved 10,169 pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. That is 500 more trips than last year and 1,001 more miles of riding! Newport High School in Bellevue came in first to win the Golden Pedal Award with their riders making 366 trips during May. In a close second, Wenatchee’s Foothills Middle School riders took 306 trips.

In our final raffle drawing, two students won a brand new bicycle as well as two free passes to a signature Cascade ride! The winners were Kai Bromiley at Foothills Middle School in Wenatchee and Elena Runyan at Skyline High School in Issaquah.

Last month, we said goodbye to a dear member of our Bike to School community with the passing of Clint Loper, a parent champion who was instrumental in creating bike culture at Bryant Elementary and Eckstein Middle School. A founding member of Walk.Bike.Schools, a group formed to support other parent champions, Clint also served on the Seattle Bike Advisory Board as well as the Cascade Bicycle Club Education Foundation Board.

Cascade has created the Clint Loper Award to honor a parent bike-to-school champion, working within their community to foster and promote what Clint called “kid-powered transportation”. The award this year goes to Stephanie Frans, a parent at Olympic Hills Elementary who is working to create new bike programming for youth in her community, with a focus on equity and access. In the face of imposing infrastructure and a challenging environment, Stephanie has collaborated with her school’s PTA and Lake City Neighborhood Greenways to address concerns and to lay the foundation for a vibrant, connected neighborhood with healthy and active kids. We are looking forward to working with Stephanie and her community.

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Thank you to our sponsor Seattle Children’s Hospital for supporting the Bike to School Challenge this year and for helping student riders, coordinators and communities lead healthy and active lives.

We can’t wait for next year!

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