Salinas gets $135,000 grant to improve pedestrian safety

The Monterey County Health Department has been awarded $130,000 from the California Office of Traffic Safety to bring pedestrian safety education to schools in Salinas. The grant will benefit three elementary schools in East Salinas – Bardin Elementary, Cesar E. Chavez, and Dr. Oscar F. Loya Elementary.

Safe Travels Via Salinas, as the program is called, aims to encourage more students to walk or bike to school. Walking to school is an activity that benefits parents and students by including physical activity and getting to know other parents. Safe Travels also aims to reduce pedestrian injuries in the City of Salinas, which had a total of 50 between October 2016 and September 2017.

Safe Travels will bring bike safety education directly to the students through assemblies and bike rodeos. Topics will include watching out for unsafe drivers, bike safety, and helmet usage.

The grant will allow for children to practice their bicycle skills within a bike rodeo brought to their school. Students will work with pretend traffic situations, such as cars backing up in driveways and distracted drivers, learning to recognize the problems and how to protect themselves.

Special walk to school events will be held throughout the year to encourage students and parents to walk instead of drive to school. Stay tuned for dates!

A huge casualty of budget cuts -- and an unlikely hero

It's the second time in the last few months that I cover an event I feel would be exciting for young people to attend. The first one was a national telecast of community forums with filmmaker Ken Burns at the National Steinbeck Center about the Dust Bowl. 

Organizers expected 200 students. Only about 80 showed up -- mostly from private schools.

Today I covered an event in Salinas where many students were invited from all over Monterey County. Only 14 students from Seaside High made it.

It's so sad, really, to see students missing out on great opportunities because they can't get transportation. In these day an age when extra-curricular activities seem to take such importance on college entrance exams, it's crucial to extend opportunities to students, but sadly, something's falling through the cracks.

Transportation has always been deemed an "extra," almost a luxury item, but is it really in such a widespread community?

And the unlikely hero? The district that many love to bash: MPUSD, the only one to have the means to bring the students to Salinas. 

Or did AVID students fundraise for that?

Whoever paid for the trip, kudos! These kids were amazing!

It's National School Bus Safety week so please...

watch out for the little ones -- and not so little ones too -- as they get in and out of school buses.

Studies prove that the most dangerous part of the school bus ride for children is when they get on and off the bus. When you consider that this is also "walk to school" month, drivers are encouraged to be super careful and pay attention to the young pedestrians.

And when I say drivers, I actually mean "parents." Sadly, most of the complaints you'll hear are directed toward parents, those who are in such a hurry to drop their children off and pick them up they cut in front of other people, park illegally, etc. So be careful out there, not just for your children's sake but for everyone's. 

California is actually doing very well in student safety, considering how many thousands of students are transported every day -- a lot fewer than before the budget cuts, but still. So let's keep it that way.

And speaking of walking, students from Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Seaside will be walking to school on Wednesday, October 24th along with parents, teachers and community leaders to mark the occasion. So if you see a large contingent of little ones on Broadway and Noche Buena crossing the street, watch out!

Participants will receive a healthy snack, a small prize, and a modest amount of sweat.