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The Saratogian Newsroom blog, complete with thoughts and commentary from our newsroom staff and regular posts on happenings around town.

Thursday, July 9

School district: Hang your head in shame

About six weeks ago, I wrote a story about a boy and his mother who rode their bikes to the Maple Avenue Middle School -- only to be reprimanded for breaking the school's no-riding-to-school rule.

Locally, bicycle advocates and anyone not given to semi-paranoid beliefs that there is a pedophile hiding behind every tree spoke out against the policy, and the school board duly agreed to re-consider the policy during their summer recess -- we followed the story through several meetings, and articles on the topic can be found here.

I had just about forgotten about the story, as school was over for the year, and peace was seemingly restored to the school-aged set, but I received an email earlier today from the Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network's Doug Haller, alerting me that the story had garnered some attention in a few other outlets.

The story was mentioned in posts Tuesday on both Switchboard, a blog hosted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Big Blog, hosted by the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Clearly, both of these blogs are putting forth an agenda -- and that agenda includes promoting bicycling as a viable method of getting around, and as a legitimate alternative to buses. And, that's an agenda that I'm OK with.

Thanks to both blogs of seeking out my story, and for putting it for more readers to see and digest.

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I regularly rode my bike to school with friends. It was faster than walking, and -- I think -- more fun. Having been properly trained to ride in and around traffic by our parents, we were always safe as we rode, and we were never threatened by child molesters either.

In addition to doing something good for the environment, riding to school gave my friends and I a feeling of Independence -- a feeling that I would hope Spa City parents and schools would want for their students.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrew, i think you are being too judgmental on this one. The school has actually put together a committee that will meet throughout the summer to further investigate the possibilities of riding bikes to school. I believe their policy will be overturned by the end of the year.

July 10, 2009 at 12:07 PM 
Blogger The Saratogian City Desk said...

anon 12:07:
Thanks for your comment. I did point out the current review in the post, but thank you for reiterating.

July 10, 2009 at 5:03 PM 
Blogger Trapped in History said...

andrew, the school district allows bike riding to all it's schools except greenfield and the middle school i presume. kids can ride to any inner city school.

July 11, 2009 at 7:41 PM 

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