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Students “walk and roll” to Blue Mountain Elementary

Organizers encourage alternative ways for families to get to school
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Erin Jeffreys talks with parents and students on Tuesday at Blue Mountain Elementary School for the school's first ever Walk and Roll Day.

Blue Mountain Elementary School students showed up to class by bike, skateboard and foot on Tuesday morning.

Their first ever Walk and Roll Day encouraged physical activity, spread awareness about carbon footprints and provided more information on safe “rolling” and walking routes to school. Organizer and parent Erin Jeffreys explained that her hope is to get Blue Mountain involved in Boulder County’s Trip Tracker program in 2023.

“We just wanted to really show that we are 100% on board with trying to get that at Blue Mountain and show that kids really do want to walk and roll to school and put in the extra effort,” she said.

Trip Tracker is a county and school district partnership that encourages school communities to choose an alternative to the single-family car to get to school with the chance to earn Tracker Bucks, which can be spent at participating local businesses. The St. Vrain Valley School District Trip Tracker program was put on pause in 2021, but is expected to return next year.

Cammie Edson, youth transportation program manager for the county, said that the county provides tons of resources to help schools get more students walking and rolling to class, helping organizers to find free safety education materials, including the county’s own lending library.

“The goal is to get more kids walking and biking, but to ensure that they have safe environments to do so, which means the physical environment as well as the skills,” Edson said. “So it can focus on infrastructure and then it can focus on non-infrastructure, like those behavior change kind of programs.”

The excitement was palpable at Blue Mountain on Tuesday morning with a large turnout of young walkers, bikers and more. An estimated 66% fewer cars were driven to the elementary school that morning, Jeffreys said.

She said the benefits of physical activity combined with reducing her carbon footprint and overall traffic motivates her to bike almost every time she comes to the elementary school. She also models that behavior for her children.

“I realize we all have a hundred things going on in our lives, I get it,” Jeffreys said. “My son frequently asks, ‘Oh, can you please drive me?’ I’m like no, come on, walk or bike. You know, we need to do our part is kind of my feeling.”

The hope is that Blue Mountain will continue to have these events annually, along with joining the Trip Tracker program next year. Jeffreys added that she hopes to get more traction on alternative transportation for the other schools in southwest Longmont, including Altona Middle School, Eagle Crest Elementary and Silver Creek High School.

“We all rely on each other … and so if we can at least reduce the traffic flow that would help everyone,” she said.