(Community Matters 193) A State Mini-Grant Could Change How Kids Get To School at Pennfield and Marshall Schools

Marshall Public Schools and Pennfield Schools are two local recipients of a mini-grant from MDOT Safe Routes to School. Marshall Public Schools Superintendent Becky Jones and Pennfield Schools Superintendent Stephanie Lemmer, talk about how this could create new and safer ways for kids to get to school in those districts. 

Episode Resources

Marshall Public Schools Website

Pennfield Public Schools Website

MDOT Safe Routes to School Website

ABOUT COMMUNITY MATTERS
Former WBCK Morning Show host Richard Piet (2014-2017) returns to host Community Matters, an interview program focused on community leaders and newsmakers in and around Battle Creek. Community Matters is heard Saturdays, 8:00 AM Eastern on WBCK-FM (95.3) and anytime at battlecreekpodcast.com.

Community Matters is sponsored by Lakeview Ford Lincoln and produced by Livemic Communications.

Transcript

MDOT Mini-Grant And Who Won

Richard Piet 0:01

Community Matters, that's us, weekly at 95.3 or anytime. Battlecreekpodcast.com. We're also where you find podcasts now. Community Matters Calhoun County. Follow us there, and you can listen right on your device. Probably the simplest way to do so. And we thank you for doing that. All this a service of Lakeview, Ford, Lincoln. Michigan Department of Transportation announcing some mini-grant awards for something called safe routes to school. Number of districts across the state receiving funds out of a $282,000 pot. And two of them are very familiar to you folks: Marshall Public Schools and Pennfield Schools coming away with a chunk of change each. Penfield $42,000, almost $43,000, and over $100,000 to Marshall. Here now from those districts, our superintendents, Stephanie Lemmer from Pennfield and Becky Jones from Marshall to talk about what safe routes to school means to students in those districts. Hello to you both.

Marshall’s Plan For Safer Commutes

Richard Piet 1:08

Hello. Good morning. So safe routes to school. What does this mean for each district? Becky, I'll start with you. What does it mean for Marshall?

Becky Jones 1:18

So for Marshall Public Schools, the Safe Route to Schools is going to provide uh seven program coordinators at each one of our buildings. So that would be K-12, their part-time positions to help promote safe routes to school for our kids. They are going to work with the students about bike safety, walking safety, and they're going to coordinate the routes for the kids to take to school for each one of our buildings. So we also have some promotional materials in there, bike racks for our students to be able to park their bikes at the school. We're going to do a K5 assembly. Each student is going to receive a book, K-5, to promote safe routes to school. And then helmets for our bike riders, vests for our walkers and bike riders. And then winter clothing is also going to be provided for the students, uh, you know, hats, gloves, items of that nature. So that pretty much sums up what Marshall Public Schools is doing with the Safe Route to School grant.

Richard Piet 2:19

Wow. How about Pennfield, Stephanie? What does this mean for you?

Stephanie Lemmer 2:22

We're doing a lot of the same things that Marshall Schools are doing as well for our students. We'll have a site coordinator and a lot of the same activities that Becky just referred to as well. And one of our main emphasis is

Penfield’s Goal To Increase Walkers

Stephanie Lemmer 2:38

really on increasing the number of students that use safe routes to school over getting a car ride or a bus ride. So we're looking forward to tracking that and doing different things to incentivize our students to want to try a different way of getting to school.

Richard Piet 2:54

Becky, why is this important? Talk about what this really means.

Becky Jones 2:59

So I think that it promotes safe communities and it promotes our students getting out and being active to take themselves to school for us.

Richard Piet 3:06

You see that too, Stephanie, I imagine.

Stephanie Lemmer 3:08

Yeah, definitely. I this the interesting part about this grant for us is, and I think fitting with the title of your show, Community Matters, is I first learned about the grant through the township supervisor who was encouraging me to look into it and then pursued it alongside of a parent that was really concerned about the safety for students that choose to walk to school.

Richard Piet 3:32

Yeah, this folds into, I guess, uh the learning that we all encountered about looking both ways and being careful how we ride and walk. And so this fits nicely into that, right?

Stephanie Lemmer 3:47

Definitely. A lot of school districts were not created with a

Why Traffic And Safety Got Harder

Speaker 1 3:52

plan for having an increasing number of cars come on school campus to drop students off. Back in the day, there were a lot of walkers, uh, there's no school of choice. So as things have evolved, we in our district have over a thousand cars on campus every morning and afternoon. And so uh there's just not enough space for all of that, and um, keeping students safe is our number one priority.

Richard Piet 4:19

Well, you know, I believe that. And it's funny because I'll drive by a school at transit time and see the lines of cars, and and just this is new to me. I'm not a parent. So I observe from the outside, right? And and I see these lines, and I think, man, you know, it wasn't like that when I was in school. We were on the bus. Or we were walking or or riding our bikes. It is different now. And Stephanie, you bring up a good point. If you're doing a school of choice, there's probably no other way for a student to get there, or at least fewer ways, if there's a distance involved, i f they're going to a school that's not necessarily in their neighborhood, ri ght?

Stephanie Lemmer 4:59

Correct. So that's why it's even more important that all of the kids that could possibly ride their bikes to school or walks to school have the opportunity to do that.

Richard Piet 5:10

Yeah, you probably encounter that too, Becky, right? I mean, uh, folks are concerned about traffic. And uh, you know, I think about Marshall and and the main street down Marshall. I was talking to the mayor a few months ago, and and I was asking him, you know, what are what are residents worried about in Marshall? And he says, traffic on the roads and pedestrians. This is a concern, isn't it?

Becky Jones 5:33

Yeah, and where are a couple of our elementaries are located in Marshall specifically, they're in neighborhoods, and so those roads are really tight. We've already had to bump out um to do drop-off lanes um, specifically at Gordon Elementary, because at pickup time you can't get through both ways, and so we're really trying to help. We're hoping to also, like Stephanie, take down on traffic at the elementary schools for drop-off and pickup.

Richard Piet 5:58

Yeah, these are modern challenges, right? You can't rebuild a neighborhood around a school, but this is a challenge when traffic can't get through. Do you expect that encouraging young people to ride bikes and walk and giving them these tools would alleviate the traffic thing? Could it go that far?

Becky Jones 6:18

I think I'm hopeful that it will go that far within some of our schools. That, you know, I'm sure on bad weather days we won't have as many kids walking and riding to school. And we are Michigan. So, but I'm hopeful that in the summer, promoting safe routes to school to our kids, they'll want to walk to school and ride

Surveys, Alternate Drop Spots, Bus Pressure

Becky Jones 6:38

their bikes to school.

Richard Piet 6:39

How about you, Stephanie? Do you think that would have an effect for you?

Stephanie Lemmer 6:42

Yeah. Part of the grant application required us to test out some of the runs and then to survey students about whether they walked to school, got dropped off, you know, how they got there each day for a couple of weeks. So we collected some data that we tested out the routes. Then we took some additional surveying of our students and their parents about if we were to implement some of these different strategies, would they be more likely to have their student walk? And currently, we have less than 1% of eligible walkers using that as their their way to school. But it our survey showed that it would go up significantly if we put some of these strategies in place. And uh in some districts, they rely on they're called alternate drop spots. So the family would drop their child off at a centralized location and then everybody would walk together. And so those are, you know, a couple of the things we're gonna we're gonna try out to see just what type of impact we can truly have on the traffic situation.

Richard Piet 7:50

Less than one percent who could walk actually do it.

Stephanie Lemmer 7:55

Yeah, it worked out to like one a day.

Richard Piet 7:58

Wow. That 's incredible.

Stephanie Lemmer 8:01

Pennfield Road is is a very uh busy road, and also there's other neighborhoods off of 66. That's another, you know, those are some heavy traffic roads for parents to let their kid take off on.

Richard Piet 8:16

So yeah, I get that. Could this help with bus driving volumes too? Do you suppose? I've seen districts, I don't know if this is uh true for yours, but uh I've seen districts struggling to find drivers and canceling routes at times and things. If you could divert kids from a bus to walking or riding their bike more regularly, this wou ld alleviate that challenge if you even have it. True?

Becky Jones 8:42

Yeah, we already do a certain mile radius where we don't do bus pickup if you are within the school walking distance. We try to promote that already. I mean, we are not, we don't have a special thing going with bus drivers. We're struggling for drivers also. So we we don't have like a whole secret stash of bus drivers. So we're hoping to take down on the parent drop-off and then um, you know, obviously promoting kids getting to school safe and and using their bikes to get to school. I mean, one of the things I was at an elementary school at the end of the year last year, and there was one bike that was sitting on the bike rack, and I was like, we only have one student that rides their bike to school. Wow. And so for me, that was where where this kind of came into play that we should be promoting students riding their bikes to school.

Stephanie Lemmer 9:30

Like Becky, I I look at a bike and I just see freedom because I know for me as a kid, that was what I did every chance I got was to be out riding my bike. So I'd love to see that our kids can have that uh that relationship with biking and being outdoors too.

Richard Piet 9:47

You know, I'm looking at this list of districts that received money from this grant from MDOT. There's only seven Grand Blanc, Reiths Puffer Schools. I don't even know where they are. Hats off to them. Eastside Colts Youth Athletic Organization, Wayne County, Marshall Pennfield, and Taquamina. So this is a wide-ranging group. Was this tough to get?

From Mini-Grant To Bigger Infrastructure

Stephanie Lemmer 10:10

Yeah, we've been working with safe routes to schools for three years. So started down this path after we unfortunately had a student that was hit by a car on Penfield Road. And so it's taken some time to get through all of the steps of the grant application. And this is what's called the mini grant. So after you successfully achieve this grant, then you're you're eligible for larger grants that help with infrastructure, things like sidewalks, crosswalks, traffic lights, all of the infrastructure that you need to make your route safer as well. So this is just the beginning.

Richard Piet 10:52

Wow. So Becky, what about you? You started working on this a while ago too.

Becky Jones 10:57

We started working on it this year. So I have a my curriculum director found the Safe Routes to School grant and started working on it just because we wanted to promote um students walking to school, riding to school. And we feel really fortunate that we got the award that we did.

Richard Piet 11:13

No kidding. $104,975,000 for uh Marshall. So a good point. This puts you on the radar then for more opportunities, maybe bigger ones. Boy, I assume that other districts are thinking the same thing. So you had to uh, you know, get your ducks in a row here.

Stephanie Lemmer 11:34

Definitely. I think that we have a really good plan for the short term and one for the long term as well. And just thankful for the community's support and working with us to

Year-End Wins And Bond Questions

Stephanie Lemmer 11:47

help create great opportunities for our students.

Richard Piet 11:50

All right. Before you go, I want to give both of you a chance to uh reflect on the year here uh after the the school year is just now completed. Becky, how was uh how was your year in Marshall?

Becky Jones 12:01

We had a great year in Marshall and in Albion. It was probably one of the better years that I had in the 13 years that I've been with the district. So just really excited to see what next year brings. We had a really good closeout of the year and yeah, it was fun.

Richard Piet 12:17

How about your uh aftermath of ballot questions? You've probably been rolling that around in your mind.

Becky Jones 12:24

You know, as we continue to see um property values increase, we continue to see the Marshall uh bonded indebtedness go down. We are kind of looking at maybe a 2027 ballot question. We've been applying for grants and we've been successful in getting grants to help with infrastructure to take some of that pain off of our taxpayers. And so we should be coming out maybe with a new bond ask soon.

Richard Piet 12:53

Okay. How was your year, Stephanie and Pennfield?

Stephanie Lemmer 12:56

Uh, it was a fabulous year. It was a great group of students, staff. The graduating class this year was uh one of those classes I think that will leave a lasting impression on me for a long time. An outstanding group of students that I'm really excited to see what they all go out in the world and do. Like Becky, we are we are too looking at a bond question next year, a zero mil um increase as our bond indebtedness has decreased as well. We just wrapped up our previous bond and it was a great start to the infrastructure needs that we have. But with uh aging buildings, all the mechanicals and all the things that we don't see on the outside, they they need lots of work on an ongoing basis. So we're headed

Wrap-Up And Thanks

Stephanie Lemmer 13:47

into the next year focused on that.

Richard Piet 13:49

All right. Well, congratulations on another year. Congratulations on this microgrant. The $282,000 total went to seven directions. And as we said, Marshall got over $100,000 of that. Pennfield $42,807. It's very exact, isn't it? Uh, and so uh also not a small amount. So congratulations on that hard work that's paid off, and uh we'll look forward to an update soon.

Becky Jones 14:16

Thank you.

Richard Piet 14:16

Thank you for having me today, Stephanie Lemmer, Penfield Superintendent, Becky Jones, superintendent in Marshall Public Schools here on Community Matters.