-Ride a bike
-Ride a scooter
-Ride a skateboard
-Walk or jog
Please let me know if you've got other ideas that don't require gasoline!
We live over a mile away, and there is no bus, so for now, our method of travel is scooters. We would prefer riding bikes, but there's a district-wide ban of bicycles for kids under 4th grade. (Scooters are not mentioned in the rules.;) Of course I am horribly opposed to the rule, and working with many other parents to see how we can change this policy.
So lets compare riding bikes to driving a car:
Biking: Free (once you have a bike), burns calories instead of gas, helps kids wake up and be alert for class, prevents obesity, when accompanied by a parent, it's an excellent opportunity to learn rules of the road, traffic signs, right vs left (if you say we stay to the right with our bikes, kids associate that side with R), promotes a lifelong lesson of healthy and money-saving travel
Driving: Kids and parents are at rest, parents burn gas instead of calories, vehicles pollute the environment, vehicles cause traffic congestion around schools, excess of vehicles make crossing the street at the school more dangerous (even for those who rode in a car because parking gets backed up 1/2 mile or more), kids aren't as alert when they get to the classroom
If you search the web, you'll see there are many bike bans out there, and many fighting it. It may actually be more of a liability to have a bike ban than to allow bikes! In a court of law, it takes away parents Constitutional Rights to raise children the way they want, forcing them to either walk or waste money driving. The good news is, some schools promote riding bikes with award systems! What if all schools did this? Think of the affect it would have on our country's obesity epidemic?
If you bike, walk, roll or travel in any other way than driving, we'd love to know! Thank you for helping the environment!!
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