Key Findings – Pare nt Survey

Follow-up surveying, with help from WCI, will be done so that local, state and national officials can monitor trends over time in the travel habits of students traveling to and from school.

KEY FINDINGS – PARENT SURVEY

Below are the more significant highlights gleaned from the 2014 parent survey for students grades PreKindergarten (PK) through 4. (Please note that parents of PK students were surveyed, which is not standard but admissible). Ogema Elementary School teaches students PK through 4. The results provide valuable information about parental attitudes and opinions relevant to SRTS at the Ogema Elementary School and create a benchmarking baseline which future analysis can be compared against.

The 2014 survey of the parents of students at the Ogema Elementary School found that five percent of children walked or biked to school and three percent walked or biked from school. These results aligned well with the results from the 2014 teacher-administered student travel tally, which showed three percent of children district-wide walked or biked to school and three percent walked or biked from school. When compared to national SRTS numbers from 2013 of 17.4 percent in the morning and 20.2 percent in the afternoon, the percentages of students walking and bicycling to the Ogema School are below average.19

Further WCI staff analysis of the parent survey data showed that it’s possible that 33 percent of children who live within one half-mile of the school already walk to and from school. This is somewhat in keeping with the Walk/Bike Zone concept as defined and promoted by MnDOT, which generally assumes a distance of up to a half-mile for children in grades PreK-5 are walkable or bikeable for students within those grades. Clearly, there is room for improvement if this number truly represents the percentage of students walking and biking to and from school. Other results included:

 Across all grades that attend the Ogema School (PK-4), the school bus was the most frequentlyused mode of travel to and from school followed by the family vehicle.  Distance was the main reason parents do not allow their children to walk or bicycle to/from school, by parents who currently do not allow their children to walk or bicycle.  Safety factors, such as traffic speed and volume, were chosen more frequently as barriers to children walking or biking to school than crime or violence.  A vast majority of parents (88 percent) believe that the Ogema School neither supports nor actively discourages children from walking and biking to and from school.

19

The National Center for Safe Routes to School. Trends in Walking and Bicycling to School from 2007 to 2013. March, 2015. Available at http://saferoutesinfo.org/sites/default/files/SurveyTrends_2007-13_final1.pdf. Accessed on April 1, 2016.

P a g e 64 | Chapter 8: Standardized SRTS Survey Analysis