Chapter 7: Community SRTS Open House Event

To maximize participation from community members, it was decided by the team that it may be more fruitful to go to the people instead of trying to get the people to come to us. As such, it was decided to have a table strategically-placed to intercept parents at parentteacher conferences. Parent-

teacher conferences were scheduled February 26th at the high school, and March 5th at the elementary school. While valuable public input was received at the high school, unfortunately a snowstorm forced the elementary parent-teacher conferences to be rescheduled, and we were unable to conduct the public input session on the rescheduled date. The SRTS team determined that the input received at the high school was adequate, since many parents who visited the table either had elementary-age children with them or indicated that they had children in both the elementary school and the high school.

Holding the public input session during parent-teacher conferences proved to be a winning strategy as many feedback comments were received. WCI staff was able to talk directly with parents and inform them about the SRTS planning process, the upcoming Parent Survey and the importance of SRTS programs. Conversely, members of the community were able to learn how SRTS works, and help envision what a more walkable, bikeable community could look like.

At the outreach event, WCI staff had a map of the city, as well as two boards illustrating a variety of reasons why parents may not allow their children to walk or bike to and from school, as well as reasons that might help children safely walk and bike to and from school. Stickers were placed by participants in their “top three” categories on each board (Figures 54-56).

Figure 54: The outreach table setup during the Hawley High School parentteacher conferences.

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Parents also recorded issues on the map, indicating specific areas of concern.

Figure 55: Top areas of concern in preventing kids from safely walking and biking to school as cited by parents of Hawley school children.

Figure 56: What parents of Hawley school children cited as the best strategies to help kids safely walk and bike to school.