Education Resources
Safe Routes STARS are young energetic performers who visit classrooms throughout the state to teach pedestrian safety education and bicycle safety education while promoting safe walking and biking as fun, healthy ways to get to and from school safely.
The program includes:
· Classroom instruction in the form of a 45-minute presentation
· Follow-up hands-on skills training with on-foot street crossing lessons and on-bike safety skills lessons
· School and community-based outreach events to encourage parent participation in safe, active transportation
K - 8 SRTS Lesson plans center on the goals of the Safe Routes to School program and were developed by the Mississippi Department of Education's Office of Healthy Schools. These lesson plans provide teachers with new ways to fulfill the health instruction requirements for K - 8 grade students.
Statewide Crossing Guard Training Program – developed to assist in promoting safe crossing for all children in schools zones, this training is available free of charge. For more information and to set up a training in your community, contact Leonard Swilley with MDE’s Safe and Orderly Schools at 601-359-1028.
Crossing Guard Guidelines for Mississippi
Crossing Guard Training Presentation
National Center For Safe Routes to School (NCSRTS) assists states and communities in enabling and encouraging children to safely walk and bicycle to school. The National Center serves as the information clearinghouse for the federal Safe Routes to School program.
Some of the resources offered by the NCSRTS include:
Webinars: The NCSRTS partners with America Walks to offer a series of SRTS webinars. These free webinars are designed to educate individuals, communities and organizations on topics to assist with successful planning, outreach and implementation efforts. For a list of archived webinars, click here. You may sign up to receive notifications for upcoming webinars, too. The calendar below lists all NCSRTS webinars as well as other free webinars you may find interesting.
Children's Books about Walking and Bicycling: Children Books.pdf
Encouragement Resources
Walking School Bus: A group of children walking to school with one or more trusted adults. For more information about this program and how to begin one, visit Walking School Bus Basics.pdf. You may also download a previously shown Walking School Bus Webinar.
 International Walk to School Day is celebrated each year on the first Wednesday in October and International Walk to School Month is throughout each October. National Bike to School Day is held in May. However, you can hold an event any time of the year. Click here for Walk/Bike to School Event Planning Resources. Visit www.walkbiketoschool.org for more information and to register your event.
The Mississippi Walk to School Challenge recognizes the school with highest percentage of its student population participating in a Walk to School event by awarding them the Golden Sneaker Trophy to be displayed in their school for one year. The event must be registered at www.walkbiketoschool.org, take place in October, and must be a walk to school. Finally, the event coordinator must complete the post-event survey. If students are unable to walk to school, that's OK. The Step It Up Award is presented to the school that exhibits spirit and innovation at its walk at school event. This school must also register its event at www.walkbiketoschool.org and complete the post-event survey.
Of course, making active transportation the regular mode choice to school is the MDOT SRTS Program's goal. Communities can begin to encourage walking more than one day at an event by instituting Walking Wednesdays or another type of program that encourages students and their families to walk and bicycle to school regularly.
In addition to Walking School Buses and Events, other popular encouragement programs are Contests, Mileage Clubs, establishing Park-and-Walk sites, and Promotion of Safe Routes on a Map.
Evaluation Resources
Safe Routes to School Program Evaluation: Data is vital for SRTS programs. The NCSRTS provides resources and tools to help make collecting, summarizing and analyzing data as easy and straightforward as possible.
- Standardized Forms Instructions: These basic instructions explain how to distribute and collect the two standardized forms.
- Student Travel Tally: This one-page form can be used to collect information about student travel to and from school at the classroom-level.
- Parent Survey: This two-page form can be used to collect information about student travel, important issues, and parental attitudes. The National Center offers paper-based and online survey collection.
Submit your data: Access the online data system to create or return to an account, enter new data from paper forms, and view summary reports.
Other Resources
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
2011 SRTS Conference Presentations:
Reports
The National Center and ITE developed a series of nine instructional briefing sheets for transportation practitioners to use for Safe Routes to School program planning and implementation. The briefing sheets support transportation engineers and planners as they work to establish safer walking and bicycling routes near schools and may be found on the ITE website.
Shifting Modes: A Comparative Analysis of SRTS Program Elements and Travel Mode Outcomes
How Children Get to School: School Travel Patterns from 1969 to 2009, http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/sites/default/files/resources/NHTS_school_travel_report_2011_0.pdf. This report gives the results of school travel trends tracked for four decades.
Getting Results: SRTS Programs That Reduce Traffic, first in a 3-part series, shows how specific schools in Utah, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Vermont and California measured success after using a variety of traffic reduction strategies. (From the National Center for Safe Routes to School)
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