by Robb Davis
Adults who grew up in Davis will often harken back to their experience as students noting that “everyone” biked or walked to school in the past. Most cannot recall when the trend to driving children to school took off, but most would concur that bicycling and walking are at much lower levels than in the past. So, what proportion of students are bicycling or walking to school in Davis?
As part of its Safe Routes to School Program, elementary and junior high schools across the district conducted classroom tallies of how students had arrived at or planned to leave school in in early October, 2013.
In addition to this effort, groups of volunteers and parents who are part of the Davis Bicycles! School Committee conduct monthly counts of bikes at bike racks. While these counts do not permit an assessment of walking habits, they can be compared to enrollment at the school to estimate the proportion of students bicycling to school.
The following graphs summarize data from the classroom tallies and compare it to bike rack counts.
Figure 1 shows the data collected on the morning of October 1 across all elementary schools in the district. October 1 was a sunny day, with cool morning temperatures—a nearly perfect day for bicycling or walking. As a result, it is fair to assume that these results represent the high end of what might be expected for each school in terms of the proportion of students walking and biking.
The results are, perhaps, not surprising but interesting nonetheless. As expected, older students are more likely to bicycle to school but there is little difference by age group for walking.
Further, though the Patwin results are from few observations[1], one can seen that it has overall much higher proportions bicycling and walking than other schools. This is not surprising given the relatively small “catchment” area of the school and that the school is a true “neighborhood” school with safe access by bike and on foot.
Of some surprise are the Cesar Chavez results. This school has a Spanish immersion program and attracts students from across town. Despite this its totals are not far below Pioneer and Montgomery—two neighborhood schools.
Also of interest, Pioneer 4-6 graders have bicycling and walking rates similar to others schools in the district but much lower rates for K-3. Regular cyclists in Davis hypothesize that this is due to two factors: Mace Boulevard, which acts as a major “safety barrier” for parents and the narrow and heavily trafficked approach to the school.
Figure 2 compares bicycling tally results from these same schools with the maximum rates for biking from the bike rack counts. Results indicate that bike rack counts are a reasonable proxy for complete tallies. This is useful because bike rack counts take up no classroom time and only take a few minutes to conduct. They provide a quick way to assess bicycling and compare trends across the year.
Finally, Figure 3 shows results for the junior high schools. The Holmes results are particularly striking with over 60% of students bicycling or walking to school.
Bike rack counts were only available from Harper and Holmes for the junior highs.
What conclusions can we draw from this data? Most simply, on a good weather day over half of junior high students and nearly 40% of elementary school students bicycle or walk to school.
Is that good? Should we be satisfied with these results? The same data, of course, indicate that more than 60% of elementary and about half of junior high students are driven to school on these days—over 4000 students.
One way to encourage more students to ride and walk is to understand parents’ concerns and assess the challenges experienced by students as they bicycle or ride to school in order to improve conditions and deal with parental concerns. “Challenges” to encouraging bicycling and walking to school include unsafe intersections or crossings, poor off street access to school property, distance, traffic congestion around schools, approaches that involve heavily trafficked streets (with high speeds) and uncertainty on the part of parents about the best, safest and most expeditious ways to get to school.
To assess these challenges the Davis Safe Routes to School program, working with Alta Planning and Design, volunteers, principals and parents, conducted “Walk and Bike Audits of all elementary and junior high schools in the fall of 2013. These audits have led to a set of school-specific reports and draft maps. The reports address major safety challenges and infrastructure improvements that could help mitigate them. The maps provide suggested routes and approaches to each school.
All project documents are available at http://saferoutesdavis.org. In addition, over the coming weeks a series of feedback and discussion sessions will be held at each school over the coming weeks. Figure 4 provides the date and time for each session by school.
If you are a parent or grandparent with a student in one of these schools and would like to work to encourage more bicycling and walking to school, please try to participate in these meetings.
Please contact the City’s Street Smarts Program Director, Rachel Hartsough at RHartsough@cityofdavis.org for more information.
And, if you would like to get more involved in encouraging more bicycling at your student’s school, contact Trish Price (trish@notsonoblepath.com) or Christal Waters (chrystal2waters@yahoo.com) to learn more about the Davis Bicyles! Schools Committee.
In addition to conducting bike rack counts and participating in the audits, the DB! Schools Committee supports efforts to help children access bicycles and organizes parent volunteers to conduct student bike safety events—“Bike Rodeos”—at each school.
[1] In general these results can be seen as a “census” of student transportation behavior. Though not shown here, there is very little difference from class to class and thus even a small sample yields a fairly precise estimate of overall school behavior.
My son, who’s been on 2 wheels since he was 3 (okay, almost 4), has ridden his bike to school since kindergarten. (He went to Chavez and Holmes, 1.0 and 1.3 miles from our house, respectively.) We drove him to school on the really rainy days, but we’ve typically been able to count those on one hand each school year.
He’s now 15-1/2 and has his learner’s permit, and is drive-crazy. He bikes to the high school (or walks, as his bike was stolen recently), though lately we’ve been letting him drive to and from baseball practice just to get more behind-the-wheel time.
Here’s what I’ve been wondering ever since he was little: will 13 or so years of regarding a bike as the default mode of local transportation stay with him as an adult, or will he look back on biking as something only kids do? Will the lure of the automobile overshadow the concept of maintaining a small carbon footprint? Perhaps the latter, but only until he matures a bit and starts thinking more globally?
I expect that the answers are as varied as are individual personalities, but I wonder if there are any trends within the jumble of data…
My theory is “money”. When I grew up, one family car, and when I came of age, you took the school bus to school, or used a bicycle, or walked. Since I was into sports where I couldn’t catch the school bus, I walked the ~2 miles from school to home (my bike was stolen in 8th grade, and I perceived family finances as such that I shouldn’t ask for another… another story). In college @ UCD, I had a new bike. Or walked.
In the early 70’s, most elementary, Jr Hi @ HS students walked or biked.
Late 80’s and 90’s I noticed that parents felt it necessary to drive their kids to/from school, saying there was too many cars for their children to walk/bike (think Pogo). Many student cars @ DHS were two, maybe 3 years old, and was not uncommon to see a student driven BMW. Some students who lived within 1/4 mile of DHS would take “their” car, and park up to an 1/8th mile away from DHS, as it was cool to drive, and there was enough family income avail to accommodate this.
Not sure how to get back to all students walking/biking, except in very inclement weather or other compelling reason.
Another purely anecdotal perspective. My children were not nearly as consistent as your son at walking or biking to school. Either their father or I dropped them off on many days. My daughter at 24 is still fairly car dependent although she will walk or use public transportation if readily available. My son at 21 is carless by choice. His preferred modes of transport are walking, skateboarding or his bike with public transportation as his back up.
I agree with you that this is most likely highly individual and that it would be nice to know, although unlikely to be able to be teased out what the actual determinants of adult behavior are.
Both of my sons rode their bicycles to Holmes and Davis High out of preference. This was in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. They moved out of the house, got jobs and apartments and lived totally on their own while attending UCD and rode bicycles all the time. They are now in their mid-to-late 30s and still love riding bikes and making cycling part of their commute in the Bay Area and NYC. Riding a bike is fun. Fixating on driving a car is a screwed up value system (a system I subscribed to myself in my teen years) that robs you of the joy of being in the elements and moving along with a sense of freedom and connectedness. So, I predict your son will always be drawn back to riding his bike.
Robb’s post with the chart that shows Pioneer has the lowest percentage of kids riding a bike is next to the post about the Davis mom going to trial for killing her kid (just across the street from Pioneer). I’m wondering if Robb has any data from a year ago that shows more kids on bikes (when Pioneer kids didn’t have to ride by the scenes of multiple murders on Glide behind the school and on Cowell a half mile away).
Jim wrote:
> My son, who’s been on 2 wheels since he was 3 (okay, almost 4),
> has ridden his bike to school since kindergarten.
Did he ride alone to kindergarten? When I was a kid this was common, but I have not heard of a parent letting a kid ride (or walk) alone to kindergarten in 20+ years.
> We drove him to school on the really rainy days,
Lucky kid, when I was younger we just wore rain coats (almost every kid in our school had the exact same yellow rain slicker)…
> He’s now 15-1/2 and has his learner’s permit, and is drive-crazy.
This is rare, since few kids today are “drive-crazy” (compared to 99.9% of the boys 40 years ago).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/12/131217-four-theories-why-teens-drive-less-today/
> Here’s what I’ve been wondering ever since he was little: will 13 or so years
> of regarding a bike as the default mode of local transportation stay with him
> as an adult, or will he look back on biking as something only kids do?
When you are 16-25 and want to feel older most kids tend to drive more and ride less (a 16 year old in a 4Runner feel a lot older (and has more girls interested in him) than the 16 year old still riding his BMX bike). As he get’s older the 13 years of muscle memory will still be there and like most people that did a LOT of riding as kids he will probably start hanging out with people who mountain bike and/or are in to road biking/triathlon/cyclocross etc.
> Will the lure of the automobile overshadow the concept of maintaining
> a small carbon footprint? Perhaps the latter, but only until he matures
> a bit and starts thinking more globally?
Spending a lot of time in the Bay Area (where rents are just crazy and young people are having a hard time making ends meet) it seems like most (but not all) the young people riding and talking about a “small carbon footprint” are the ones that can’t afford to own a car (or take Uber) The young GSB grads I know that have had a great few years tend to have cool cars, but these days leave them at home and get around with Uber.
I expect that the answers are as varied as are individual personalities, but I wonder if there are any trends within the jumble of data
My nephew is attending Pioneer, it’s two blocks from us. There aren’t a lot of bikers and it is a shame. We’re guilty of that too, it’s easier to drop him off on my way into town than to have him walk or bike.
David, in what way is it easier? If he is biking or riding himself it would seem that you would have one less morning “to-do” than you currently have. Am I missing something?
I actually think the point David made is at the basis of getting more kids on their bikes. It’s the more common problem of doing things for kids instead of training them to do for themselves. We’ve noticed the enhanced Helicopter Parent syndrome take its toll over the last 30 years. It’s easier to just do their laundry, make their lunches, cook for them, do their dishes, on and on. Kids need to participate in all aspects of family life and that includes transportation. While I realize Davis traffic is a little crazier than it was 30 years ago because today’s young drivers apparently learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto, there is no reason why kids shouldn’t be willing to ride their bikes a couple of miles to school unless, of course, there are physical disabilities or the distance is over 1 mile for elementary, or 3 miles for the junior or senior high kids. Kids can be trained to be very good defensive riders.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies … or in this case our children’s worst enemy. Paraphrasing the United Negro College Fund, “Self sufficiency is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Did he ride alone to kindergarten?”
He always had a parent along through 3rd grade, since the idea of him navigating 8th Street and Anderson Road by himself was way too scary for all of us. In 3rd grade he started asking me to turn around early, first at the bike path into the school grounds, then a block from school as the year progressed. In 4th grade he and a friend rode mostly by themselves, sometimes with his friend’s mom. By then we were comfortable that the boys could manage the traffic at 8th and Anderson without adult supervision.
In my years of accompanying him to school, I only saw a couple of kids riding by themselves prior to 4th grade. None in K or 1st, one or two in 2nd, a few more in 3rd. After that I have no data. 🙂
Way back in my day, 30 years ago in San Luis Obispo, I believe you couldn’t ride to school without a parent until 3rd or 4th grade.
South of Davis – I have 2011 data for the Pioneer overall (not broken down by grade). 24% of children rode bikes or walked on the day of the tally. It too was a sunny cool morning. 2013 data show that 30% of children rode or walked. So… there does not appear to be any effect from the incident.
“Challenges” to encouraging bicycling and walking to school include unsafe intersections or crossings, poor off street access to school property, distance, traffic congestion around schools, approaches that involve heavily trafficked streets (with high speeds) and uncertainty on the part of parents about the best, safest and most expeditious ways to get to school.
I think the main problem is the social pressure on parents to be overly protective of their kids. This pressure feeds on itself. If all the other kids are getting a “safe” ride to school, and you let your kid walk or ride his bike, and he crashes his bike or in some way gets hurt, the blame all falls on you as “an irresponsible parent.”
That said, I think it is wise to reduce safety concerns where they reasonably exist. One of those is a crosswalk over a heavily trafficked street on the way to school where there is no crossing guard and adding one is cost prohibitive. One parent wrote a letter to The Enterprise not too long ago which gave voice to this:
Last week, my 8-year-old daughter and I attempted to cross Anderson Road at Amherst Drive, using the crosswalk. While fully in the crosswalk, in broad daylight, two cars sped through in front of us, each going at least or over the speed limit of 35 mph. Unfortunately, this is not unusual. It was frightening at the time, and more so knowing that this crosswalk will soon be filled with children going to and from schools. My daughter attends César Chávez Elementary and uses this crosswalk. I urge the city of Davis to upgrade this crossing, crucial for access both to Chávez and Willett elementary schools: Drivers clearly do not see painted lines and need flashing lights, similar to those at Russell Boulevard and California Street, to signal them to stop for pedestrians.
I agree completely with this letter. My experience as a driver on Russell is that the flashing lights at the California Street crossing are very effective and Davis should install the same infrastructure* at school crossings like the one across Anderson mentioned by the letter writer. I am sure there are other sites near other schools where such lights would be a great benefit to safety.
*I’m sure cost is a problem. I would guess that UCD paid for the flashing lights at California Street across Russell. That is just all the more reason to freeze total compensation. We will never be able to function properly as a city if we keep increasing the compensation of city workers. We just bumped up salaries by 2% last week, increased medical premium expenses by 11.1% (half of that is covered by the employees) and we will again increase the cost of pensions next July 1 by far more than we can afford.
I have to call you on the BS about the flashing light @ Russell/California. ALL paid by City.
Read it again hpierce, he said he GUESSED that UCD paid for the lighting. So it wasn’t BS at all.
Fair point. Probably focused on where he took his guess as far as ‘root causes’.
hp — You are calling BS on something I said was a guess? Have you no tact at all? I’m calling AH on you.
“I would guess that UCD paid for the flashing lights at California Street across Russell.”
I based my guess on the 4-5-2012 2012 staff report, which said:
“The estimated cost of this improvement is approximately $14,000 to $20,000 depending on the possibility of using the existing poles. Currently, there is no funding to cover this cost. Staff is contacting UCD for potential cost sharing.”
I never found any follow-up report which explained where the funds came from. Hence my guess.
But now that you have so rudely called me a bullish*tter, it turns out you were mistaken. I have now found where the money came from in the 6-12-2012 staff report:
“Estimated cost of this improvement is approximately $15,000. UC Davis has agreed to fund half the cost of the improvements (up to $10,000) upon completion of the installation. Based on cost estimates, UC Davis’ cost share will be $8,000, the amount in the appropriation request. The City’s cost share includes staff time and the use of existing poles, signs and markings plus approximately $2,000 budgeted in the existing Signing & Striping program (7256).”
Advice: don’t be so rude for no good reason. Just say you think I was mistaken in my guess. Or if you know for a fact I was mistaken, then prove that with a source.
AH, hpierce just got punked. Rich, way to put the him in his place. LOL
Just so I understand the “rules’…. you can “guess” with no corroboration, but if the guess is challenged, the challenger needs to provide proof/documentation? I could, as I know that in studying the site, preparing plans and specs for the work, the City paid the lion’s share of the costs, and the university paid a token amount for the installation/materials.
The fair conclusion from the post you made was that the city paid nada. Spin it as you wish.
That is, the original post… your quote of the staff report did clarify that, and I appreciate it.
Lost a beloved four-legged family member last week, and I have run hot/cold on emotions, and I do apologize for the exact words I used. My fault.
BTW, the improvements you reference were not the first signal installation at the site… it was a re-do. UCD paid nothing for the first. It was the first that I was knowledgeable about. Hence the references to the existing poles.
“I’ve always followed my father’s advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble. ” — John Wayne.
Maybe we can just discuss things without the characterizations?
Fair enough.
Rifkin: I think the main problem is the social pressure on parents to be overly protective of their kids. This pressure feeds on itself. If all the other kids are getting a “safe” ride to school, and you let your kid walk or ride his bike, and he crashes his bike or in some way gets hurt, the blame all falls on you as “an irresponsible parent.”
See comment below on the increase in school choice options in Davis that may not have existed when you were in school.
School choice for the purpose of academic immersion and academic magnet programs makes a lot of sense. School choice for reasons other than participation is specific academic programs should be highly, highly discouraged. That would mean that more kids would go to their local neighborhood school with the kids from their neighborhood. More walking and more biking would be the result. Better interpersonal social skills would be the result as well.
One step that should be taken as soon as possible is to make the High School parking lot a paid lot. UCD charges $7.00 per day for its parking lots. That seems like an appropriate daily parking fee for DHS students who choose to drive to school and park rather than walking or biking to school. For those who insist on continuing to drive, the parking fee would encourage car pooling. Students with disabilities would be exempted.
“Students with disabilities would be exempted.”
Not that I disagree, but I am 100% sure that the number of students with “disabilities” would vastly increase.
See “National Epidemic of Horrible People Pretending to Be Disabled
Read more: National Epidemic of Horrible People Pretending to Be Disabled” in TIME magazine.
http://business.time.com/2013/10/12/national-epidemic-of-horrible-people-pretending-to-be-disabled/#ixzz2qA8ymDaB
Here are a few quotes:
“The Walt Disney Company felt compelled to change its disabled guest policy at theme parks partly due to “abuse of the system.” The announcement came after reports surfaced that wealthy guests were paying wheelchair-riding tour guides top dollar so that the group could use the line-skipping privileges granted to the disabled at Disney theme parks. …
“Last spring, over the course of a mere four hours, authorities in Oakland, Calif., confiscated 13 handicapped placards being used illegally by drivers. That’s out of a total of 70 placards they came across, meaning nearly one in five was fraudulent. …
“A report in Seattle published over the summer estimated that one in eight drivers using disabled parking placards is doing so fraudulently, costing the city $1.4 million annually.
“Drivers with such placards get to park for free in Providence, R.I., where it just so happens that there has been an influx of cars with disabled parking passes near train stations and bus stops. …
“Suspicions of disabled placard abuse have gotten so bad in New Jersey—where more than 500,000 people have special placard and license plate privileges—that the state introduced tougher regulations last spring.”
Rifkin: Not that I disagree, but I am 100% sure that the number of students with “disabilities” would vastly increase.
Another example of Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Making the DHS lot a paid lot will further reinforce the ‘class divide’ of the wealthy students who drive their mommy’s BMW to school and couldn’t care less about how much it costs to park. I do think it is a good way to raise money, though. Let the rich pay more of their share.
Point well taken Dave.
WDF 8:48 pm: “See comment below on the increase in school choice options in Davis that may not have existed when you were in school.”
See my comment made on this 10 hours and 11 minutes before you decided I didn’t consider magnet schools:
Rich 10:37 am: “… young children who have to ride more than 1.5 miles to a magnet school likely would not be good candidates. But for all the rest, I think my idea would work.”
One difference today with my childhood experience is kids have much shorter distances to go to junior high school. Back in the mid-late 1970s, only Holmes was open. Those of us who lived in West Davis had a 4.6 mile round trip bike ride every day–rain or shine. Post Prop 13, there was no bus. I don’t remember any massing of cars on Drexel Drive, the way one sees today at Holmes and at every school in town.
And FWIW, someone suggested that people are wealthier now–which in general is true–and they have two cars, allowing them to drive their kids to school in one of them: Every two-parent family I knew back then also had two cars. As my own father died when I was 7 and my mom did not re-marry, we only had one car. But most had two, one for each adult.
My apologies for the oversight.
The Feb. 21, 2013 school board meeting had a demographic report presented that showed the following percentages of students at each elementary who lived in that school’s attendance area:
Birch Lane: 57%
Korematsu: 61%
Montgomery: 52%
NDE: 62%
Patwin: 64%
Pioneer: 66%
Willet: 64%
Next month another demographic report will come out, and I suspect the number of within-district transfers will creep up, only exacerbating the issue of cycling from that factor.
wdf, does the report give any indication of what portion of those reverse percentages are the result of enrollment in magnet/immersion programs?
Matt Williams: It’s all available in the agenda package for that meeting, Feb. 21, 2013, Agenda item V. e. I would post a direct link for you, but in the past, such links to that archive haven’t worked. This might be a good starting point: link
Thank you wdf.
For elementary aged kids–especially those K-3 and those with some physical challenges–riding more than 1 mile on a bike without escort is probably a bad idea, especially if it includes crossing a busy street.
But I think some might be underestimating the capabilities of older children to ride a bike safely a good ways. I have seen a few young boys, about age 12, riding on their own bikes with their parents accompanying them to Winters and back (28 to 30 miles).
I think it is unfortunate that so many kids, who would benefit from the exercise, are not riding their bikes to school. But parents have to think it’s a good idea and they have to be convinced it’s safe. Group rides to school with a parent escort would probably help.
Another thing which could be done to increase the perception of safety for children bicycling to school–especially those K-6–would be to organize them (involuntarily) into small bike-riding clubs of say 8 or 10 children who go to the same school, are within a grade of each other, and live very near each other. Instead of having 8 or 10 different parents chauffeuring their children to school in a car, one or two parents could bicycle with the group and serve as leaders/escorts.
At the very least, having kids starting in kindergarten riding a bike to school in a group with a parent leading the way would make the child comfortable with the route and the responsibility of self-transport. It should also ease the fears of parents who worry that their kid could get hurt on a bike ride. And by the time the children in the group are in the 4th grade, they would no longer need (or want) a parent to ride with the group.
If this idea of mine took hold, it would not solve everything. On rainy or very windy days most (overly protective) parents would still want to drive their children to school. Kids with certain handicaps who cannot safely ride a bike would not (likely*) be helped by group bike rides. And young children who have to ride more than 1.5 miles to a magnet school likely would not be good candidates. But for all the rest, I think my idea would work.
*There exist bicycles with unique engineering to overcome some handicaps. If these bikes are too expensive for the parents to afford, it would be cool for elementary schools to have fundraisers to buy some of these bikes and lease them out to families which need them.
http://www.cargocycling.org/images/2007/06/13/handicapable_bike_cargocycling.jpg
Correction: “… to have fundraisers to buy some of these bikes …”
One aside to the “children not riding bikes” meme: I’ve met a surprisingly high number (maybe 1 in 3) of American-born women who’ve told me they rarely rode bicycles as children and as adults never felt comfortable or safe on a bike. I don’t think a man born and raised in the U.S. has ever told me that, though I’m sure some have that same non-rider background. (As to foreigners, it probably varies a lot by country.) The reason I am so surprised to meet women who are uncomfortable on a bicycle is that, growing up in Davis, 100% of girls and boys rode bikes. I have to wonder if, as mothers, these women are transferring their own bicycle insecurities on their children?
As it happens, I’m a cyclist*. I usually ride 150-200 miles every week. What I notice out on the road (outside of cities) is that 80% or more of the riders are males. Part of that likely has nothing to do with whether women feel safe as bike riders. I think a lot of women who exercise prefer, compared to males, dance, yoga and aerobics. But I do wonder if a reason the female cyclist percentage is so low is that many women just never really learned to ride a bike, and hence they won’t consider becoming exercise riders?
Warning: What I am about to say may strike some as sexist: I do see a lot of women who run for exercise. In fact, I think the percentage of joggers in Davis who are female is over 50%. Yet, of this group of female runners, some have enormous breasts and as a result need to wear a suit of armor to keep their mammaries from heaving to and fro as they move about. My thought for them is they would do much better on a bicycle. It’s a lot easier on the body. You can recover from a long bike ride in less than 24 hours, and so you can ride every day. Per mile, a bike ride burns about half the calories of a run. But if you ride 10 miles a day, 7 days a week, you will burn more calories than the runner who gets in 4 runs of 5 miles every week. So ladies with the giant ladies: try riding a bike.
*Like many other former distance runners, my knees gave out after age 40 and I needed a new form of exercise.
Anecdote with a basis for generalization? Both my sons rode to Birch Lane, Holmes and Davis High from, at the time, farthest east Davis, east of Slide Hill Park. Next door were two girls the same age who never rode their bikes. They didn’t want to arrive at school ‘messed up’. I think there is a gender culture issue at play at least in the late 1980s and 1990s.
I’m sure cost is a problem. I would guess that UCD paid for the flashing lights at California Street across Russell. That is just all the more reason to freeze total compensation. We will never be able to function properly as a city if we keep increasing the compensation of city workers. We just bumped up salaries by 2% last week, increased medical premium expenses by 11.1% (half of that is covered by the employees) and we will again increase the cost of pensions next July 1 by far more than we can afford.
This gets to the larger points of overspending impacting our ability to implement creative infrastructure solutions that help us meet all out goals of public safety, environmental progressiveness, and social justice. Look in the mirror and honestly ask yourself if you have voted or opined in support of things that have contributed to our current lack of funding. Then if so, become committed to voting and opining differently.
A few points related to kids and bikes versus automobiles.
Here is the ranking of peer assessment for modes of transportation (confirmed by my wife and sons that all attended Davis public schools):
A+ grade – Drive a nice motorcycle to and from school
A grade – Drive a nice car to and from school
A- grade – Drive an average car to and from school
B+ grade – Drive a crappy car to school… like your mom’s used mini van
B grade – Friend or sibling drive you to and from school
C+ grade – Parent drives you to and from school in a nice ride
C grade – Parent drives you to and from school in an average ride
C- grade – Parent drive you to and from school in a crappy ride.
D grade – Bike to and from school
F grade – Walk to and from school (unless the student lives close to the school)
I don’t think this “coolness” ranking has changed much since I attended high school in the late 70s. However, one difference is a higher percentage of kids being driving to and from school by parents. And given the greater difficulty and expense for kids to get a license and car these days, many of them are more accepting of a coolness grade of C or C+ for more of their high school years.
And this thing makes the point that causing difficulty will change behavior.
But also by changing the coolness factor we can change behavior.
But, part of the reasons that kids end up driving instead of biking is simple the time factor. Kids these days tend to have a lot more events and activities. Since the schools have reduced course selections, and have continued to pile on the need for AP classes and outside supplemental education and tutoring, more of a kid’s time is spent traveling to and from these related events and activities. This then puts a greater burden on the parents to coordinate transportation. So parents are eager for their kids to get their drivers license to relieve this burden.
Another way we can reduce auto use by students is to reform our education system so our kids get the full education they need at school, instead of requiring and expecting so much supplemental educational support.
Frankly: Another way we can reduce auto use by students is to reform our education system so our kids get the full education they need at school, instead of requiring and expecting so much supplemental educational support.
Note also how all the school choices in Davis increases the distance between home and school. See comment below. You’re not going to criticize school choice, are you, Frankly? It’s one thing that makes the Davis school system good.
LOL Frankly, when my youngest daughter was in 7th grade I’d drive her to school in our Dodge Caravan and she made me drop her by the gate out of sight of any of her friends. So I was a C-
It’s a traffic jam around most of the schools in the morning and afternoon. A town that talks green so much sure don’t walk the walk. If they are old enough they should be riding.
The parent’s job is to get their kids to school rested, fed, organized, and ready to learn. How they get there is not relevant, and it isn’t really anybody else’s business. If they can ride or walk, great. If it is more convenient and more effective for the parent to drop the child off on the way to work or whatever, also fine. Nobody should feel guilty for driving a kid to school. Parents have lots of reasons for the choices they make, ranging from safety concerns to effective or efficient management of after-school activities.
By all means, the committee addressing bike safety would do well to help parents feel safer about their kids biking or walking. Unsafe intersections should be dealt with. But there are too many other ‘shoulds’ involved in these discussions.
Don – What we are trying to do is provide for safer routes and riders who understand and practice safe cycling. Davis now has 7 League of American Cyclist certified League Cycling Instructors. We help staff the bike rodeos and teach basic cycling skills and how to ride safely in streets and on paths. Rachel Hartsough’s work has led to very useful audit reports and maps. The Schools’ Committee of Davis Bicycles works with parent volunteers to promote safe cycling and fun events. All this to say that our focus is on creating safer streets and giving parents the tools they and their students need to cycle safely. There is no guilt involved.
I have now done rodeos in each elementary school in the district and I can say it is great to be able to interact with students AND parents at these events. Parents want their students to cycle safely and they love it that they can help reinforce what we teach at the events. Most of them simply lack the language and understanding of the basic skills but once they learn they are excited to help the kids. If anyone here on the Vanguard would like to offer to help out at a rodeo please contact any of the people named in the article. They are really fun (I think I even saw a Toad at one one day).
I understand that is what you are doing, and I certainly appreciate those efforts. I was really responding to things like ” If they are old enough they should be riding.”
Wdf has addressed an important issue: we have magnet programs, and a variety of reasons that kids might be traveling longer distances to school. Our schools are exceptional because they provide a range of options, and parents can select among those to find the best placements for their children. Thus, to me, their mode of transportation is less important.
On previous threads about biking to school we actually had bike advocates and others arguing on behalf of neighborhood schools to enhance transportation modes. We have heard people suggest restricting intra-district transfers to maintain enrollment, or for purpose of providing diversity.
Comments like those of Matt Williams, above, I disagree with 100%. We should not dilute the focus on proper placement, good programs, and best outcomes for individual students. Please take care that your advocacy for bike programs doesn’t lead to policies that reduce parental choice within the school district.
Don Shor said . . .
“Please take care that your advocacy for bike programs doesn’t lead to policies that reduce parental choice within the school district.”
Parental choice should be restricted to academic program choice. Social compatibility choice, which is what selecting a school for your children based on where your own friends’ children go to school is, perpetuates the feeling of entitlement that has exponentially grown in our society over the last 50 years. That growth of the feeling of entitlement has done significant damage to our societal fabric.
JMHO
BTW Don, my advocacy for academic focus only in choice programs has absolutely nothing to do with bicycles and/or bicycle advocacy.
“Parental choice should be restricted to academic program choice.”
I disagree with this 100%. It is none of your business why a parent wishes his or her child to go to another school.
I’m not interested in knowing why a parent would wish to move his/her child. I’m simply saying that unless that wish is in the pursuit of a specific academic program it should be categorically denied. Actually it should be prohibited by policy. There is absolutely no reason why children enrolled in normal academic programs should not be assigned to their school purely and simply by the geography of their residence.
Again, I completely disagree. And I fail to understand why you wish to control the behavior of parents seeking the best placements and outcomes for their children for whatever reasons they might have. There can be strong, compelling personal reasons for seeking intradistrict transfers; I can think of two of my kids’ peers who literally needed them. Not for academic programs. For personal reasons, and those are not any of your business. Yet you would, with this specific policy which you have enunciated before, deny them that. There are plenty of reasons.
The reason is simple Don. There are eight million stories in the Naked School District, and that means eight million different ideas from the parents associated with those stories about the behavior of their child. That is the very definition of chaos as well as a significant driver of inefficiency and elevated cost within our school systems. The vast majority of parents have no professional training in education, yet you want to give them a trump card to overrule the decisions of the educational professionals? That makes no sense.
If I remember our past conversations on this issue you are in support of unfettered choice, and would see no problem with having a parent choose to have their child change school location each and every year of their academic career up through High School. For example you would have no problem with the following “teacher chasing” trajectory, North Davis in 1st Grade Birch Lane in 2nd Patwin in 3rd Korematsu in 4th Chavez in 5th Montgomery in 6th Emerson in 7th Harper in 8th and Holmes in 9th. Am I correct in that hearing of your past posts?
I will not get into your usual game of asking me leading questions based on your interpretations of my positions. It is NONE of your business why a parent finds a better placement elsewhere. I am unconcerned about the supposed chaos you ascribe, as it is nonexistent. I am unconcerned about your views of the educational expertise of parents. We assess our children’s needs with the schools, or not, as appropriate. It has no effect on cost for a child to make an intradistrict transfer. It is irrelevant to efficiency. You are basically making up arguments, and they all redound to the benefit of the district in theory (though I doubt if even that is true). My concern is the child and the parent making the decision.
Your concern should be for the sum total of all the children. The selfish desires of the parents of an individual child frequently are exercised at the expense of all the other children. The reason that there are children who live twice as close to one elementary school, but are forced to go to a school that is twice as far away and in the process have to cross a major arterial thoroughfare is because of the non-academic preferences exercised in the significant numbers displayed in the percentages wdf posted. I would be surprised if you did not walk to school when you were a child. I walked to my bus stop and the bus took me to the school that served the geography that my home was in. Our school district sent the vast preponderance of its students on to college, with a very enviable percentage going to Ivy league schools. I suspect your high school was similarly successful in sending its students on to equally good colleges. We went to the classes and classrooms that we were assigned to, and we built friendships and relationships with children to whose homes we could walk. We built interpersonal skills shooting baskets, playing chess, forming study groups, participating in organized activities, and occasionally baking cookies under the tutelage of one of the parents. All those things and a million more.
The choice system you advocate for breaks down all those neighborly growth experience connections. It inhibits the natural development of interpersonal skills in our children. It places the individual ahead of the collective. It undermines achieing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
i will address this one: “The vast majority of parents have no professional training in education, yet you want to give them a trump card to overrule the decisions of the educational professionals…”
I have no professional training in education, yet I had to do exactly that. So I would never seek to deny the opportunity for another parent to take the same actions we took. Educational professionals are not always the best judge of appropriate placement, and sometimes parents have to press for change for a child whose educational success is at risk.
“There is absolutely no reason why children enrolled in normal academic programs should not be assigned to their school purely and simply by the geography of their residence.”
What if a parent thinks another school is better and thus would better serve the needs of his child? You would prohibit that poor parent any choice at all? Would you prohibit a rich parent the right to send his kid to a private school if he didn’t think the neighborhood school was good?
Rich, the simple answer to your question is if a parent thinks one school is better than all the others in the district then the most direct solution to that issue is to be sure to include that consideration in their housing decision, when they make a housing decision. I recognize that life isn’t that simple, but the question that your question logically poses is what criteria is a parent using in making that decision that another school is better. If the reasons are academic, such as the presence of a magnet program or an immersion program, then I fully support such a decision. I had two years of Calculus, a year of Physics, a year of Chemistry and two years of Biology before I graduated from High School. That was because my school district firmly believed (in the ’50’s and ’60’s) such academic progress should be strongly encouraged.
However, if the reasons that the parent thinks another school is better are social or demographic, then I say to them “go back to the drawing board and look for academic achievement justification for your transfer/placement request.” The reason is simple, for every such “social transfer” into a school there is one student who lives in geographic proximity to the school who is displaced and forced to go to a more distant school instead. In met a parent today who lives in South Davis, within stone’s throw distance of Montgomery Elementary School, and her child has to trael across Mace Boulevard to Pioneer to go to school. That makes no sense in terms of the organic building of childhood friendships within the neighborhood and it makes no sense in terms of the child’s safety in walking or bicycling across mace Boulevard two times each day.
If a parent wants to take their child out of the public school system and spend the money to send that child to a private school, then that is their right. No one can tell them how to spend their money, but that is a discretionary decision that does the school district no harm. They still pay the same property taxes and school taxes regardless of whether their child is in public school or private school.
“for every such “social transfer” into a school there is one student who lives in geographic proximity to the school who is displaced and forced to go to a more distant school instead”
Completely untrue.
Where do they go Don? Are they simply added to the class size?
It’s a zero sum game. The ins and the outs offset one another.
Just look up the policy, Matt. Your statement is untrue.
So if the policy allows (for example) 50 transfers in due to parental desire, do those 50 incoming incremental students simply increase the class size?
Recognizing the physical limitations of their facilities, the School District Administration will make adjustments to cachement boundaries in order to balance class sizes across the district. Not doing so makes neither practical sense, nor political sense, and is probably in violation of union contracts.
No, Matt. Look up the policy. It’s on their web site. You’re wrong about this. Your statements are incorrect. And the blanket policies you advocate would be harmful to individual students.
Ironically Don, while you and I were yammering back and forth about this topic, Jeff Hudson was writing/publishing a story “Schoolhouse rocked: Parental choices can make waves” about it in today’s Enterprise. We may both be right. You with respect to the policy, and me with respect to the damage that some of the Davis choice options are doing to the school district.
I suspect we will all be talking a whole lot more about this subject in the coming days and weeks.
That article was from March 2013. We will not “both be right” about the factual inaccuracies that you have repeated here. Look up the policy, Matt.
The date January 12th is prominently displayed on the article on the Enterprise website, so unless the website is misleading it has every appearance of being an article from today (see http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/sunday-best/schoolhouse-rocked-does-broad-involvement-of-students-in-special-programs-negatively-impact-neighborhood-classrooms/ with the masthead at the top, “Sunday, January 12, 1014” and “Yolo County News” and “90 cents” in the next line and the article’s headline in the third line).
Regardless of what the dating of the article actually is, the article hits the nail right on the head, and calls out the issues correctly.
BTW, I did go to the website (see http://www.djusd.net/idtf ) and the Policy is nowhere near as crystal clear as you represent it to be. It specifically says:
Intra/Interdistrict Enrollment
Intradistrict Transfers (transferring to another school within DJUSD)
The Board of Education desires to provide enrollment options that meet the diverse needs and interests of students. The Superintendent or designee shall establish procedures for the selection and transfer of district students among district schools in accordance with law, board policy and administrative regulation.
Priority for Intradistrict Transfers shall be as follows:
1. Students who want to transfer to their neighborhood/boundary school.
2. Siblings of students currently in attendance at the requested school.
3. Students whose parent/guardian works for DJUSD.
4. New request to transfer to a non-boundary school.
Intra-district Request Form
Click here for the Intra-district Transfer Request Application (2014-15 application is not yet available- please check back in February)
Intra-district Transfer Request Applications for the 2014-2015 school year will be accepted beginning (date to be determined soon).
The Davis Joint Unified School District offers parents of elementary and junior high school students the option of requesting a new placement for their children other than their neighborhood/boundary school. Requests to transfer to another school are approved based upon space availability in the requested grade at the requested school.
— Intra-district Transfer Request application forms are due by (date to be determined). Application forms may be submitted to the Student Support Services Department or at your child’s school office.
— Application forms received after the deadline may be considered if space is available at the requested school.
Parents/Guardians will be notified by mail no earlier than June 30th as to whether the transfer request is approved or if the child has been placed on a “Wait List” due to no space availability in the requested grade at the requested school.
Sigh.
Matt, look at the date next to the byline.
Also, intradistrict transfers are on a space-available basis. As the information you pasted above says.
I clearly missed that March date Don. My bad. I rarely ever read bylines. I’m much more interested in what is being said than who said it. I can’t imagine that will change much in the future.
The numbers provided in the article clearly show that the DJUSD is under pressure to rebalance/redefine the cachement areas for each of the Elementary schools in order to avoid the inefficiencies described.
This clearly has the potential to be meaningful dialogue in a whole series of articles here in the Vanguard. I look forward to that community dialogue.
This discussion between us is eerily similar to our discussions about Mace 391. You cite policy and protocol and ignore the broad community impact and I focus on practical realities like $13 million per year budget deficits, the selling of a $200 million asset for $4 million dollars and failures of transparency in community dialogue.
So lets drop the discussion now until the first of the follow-up articles is published.
Don Shor wrote “Please take care that your advocacy for bike programs doesn’t lead to policies that reduce parental choice within the school district.”
I would as well like to ask you to take care that your advocacy for increased parental choice within the school district does not lead to actions that degrade my choice of cleaner air, safer streets and less congestion – especially around our most vulnerable citizens at a place where they should be safest: Children in front of their own schools.
You have incorrectly implied that your choice of where a child attends school, and how that child arrives at school does not effect others. A parent’s transportation choice effects the health and safety of all children in our town. Your choice of transportation IS of concern to me because it negatively effects my health, safety and freedoms. You are not operating in a bubble.
Well, I’m sure we can get intradistrict parents to sign affidavits that they only drive EV’s and never travel more than 25 mph as they deliver their children to get the appropriate placement.
When I was a kid, we took the school bus.
So, you’ve got no relevant response to my point? Or did you miss my point? I can’t quite tell.
In making a decision about moving my child to another school, for reasons that we as parents considered very valid, we looked at where the placement of the child would lead to the best outcome for that child. My job as a parent was to get my children through school with the best education for their future. If there was a problem that made one school unacceptable, we would not hesitate to request transfer to a different school. The mode of transport was a very low priority consideration for us in making that decision. We weren’t going to keep a kid at a school if he/she was failing, just because it was more convenient or closer. That would be bad parenting.
Parental choice in DJUSD involves choosing among magnet programs, special schools such as DSIS or King, or sometimes simply seeking a change of environment for a child whose present placement is not working.
Parents have the right and ability, within the district policies, to move a child if space is available. Since the district doesn’t provide transportation, and since biking is not always an option due to distance, safety, or extra-curricular activities, that often means the parent will be driving the child.
The paramount goal is the educational outcome for the individual child. The policy that allows that is one which presents the greatest parental choice, allowing intra-district transfers. Mode of transportation should not be a primary factor in making that decision; it’s what is best for the child.
If you’ve dealt with factors such as an at-risk child, an IEP where teachers aren’t fully cooperating, or an emotionally problematic environment, and if that situation is causing your child to flunk out of school, my guess is you won’t be as concerned about whether he or she is biking or walking to school.
“The paramount goal is the educational outcome for the individual child.”
That may well be your paramount goal for your child. And while that is certainly high on my priority list, it doesn’t even touch what is most important to me: Keeping my child healthy and alive.
I have no problem with folks having different goals for their children. What I take issue with is somebody suggesting that what *I* advocate for should not infringe on their rights… while at the same time, suggesting that their own advocacy (in this case having the right, and maybe even the duty to drive children to school for any reason at all) has no impact on *my* rights. Why would you assume that what I do impacts you, but what you do doesn’t impact me?
“If you’ve dealt with factors such as an at-risk child,… my guess is you won’t be as concerned about whether he or she is biking or walking to school.”
I am all but certain that you are correct. Have you looked at this from the other direction? If you’ve dealt with a child who’s been struck by an automobile on the way to school, or one with severe respiratory issues – my guess is that you won’t be as concerned with which teacher she has.
Thank you for the frank discussion. Clearly we both have strong emotions on both sides of this. And there is no “universal” paramount goal for every parent and child in our community.
Cheers.
“Your choice of transportation IS of concern to me because it negatively effects my health, safety and freedoms. You are not operating in a bubble.”
Gawd, don’t you love statements like this. Only in Davis.
Your comment has me interested. Was what you quoted from me any more or less “Only in Davis” than,
“Please take care that your advocacy for bike programs doesn’t lead to policies that reduce parental choice within the school district.”
I’m also always curious as to what attracts people to Davis who seem to not like what makes Davis attractive.
If Mr. Shor chooses to put his children in a different school than they’re assigned and has to drive them there doesn’t effect your health, safety and freedoms anymore than if I choose not to shop at my local grocery store and drive across town in my truck to a different one.
You seem to have skipped over the question. But anyway… I’m happy to respond to your comment:
You are mostly correct. You aren’t congesting the front of the schools and physically endangering my child with your truck at the grocery store. But certainly you are doing your best to negatively affect others with your choices, I agree. It turns out that there are countless ways to trample others’ rights without a thought to the consequences. I think you’re onto something.
As you said to Mr. Shor, “You are not operating in a bubble.” If Mr. Shor driving his child to school or my choice of which grocery store I choose to drive to tramples your rights then maybe ‘you need to live in a bubble’.
Sadly, I was wrong. It turns out that we ALL live in a bubble. It just happens that we all live in the SAME bubble.
Another factor is that in Davis, I would presume that the average distance that students must travel to get from home to school has increased over the decades. Why?
Several schools have certain magnet programs — GATE (NDE, Willet, Pioneer, Korematsu, Holmes, Harper), Montessori (Birch Lane), or Spanish Immersion or Dual Immersion (Chavez and Montgomery). Da Vinci JH grades are housed at Emerson, and students at DVHS (at the old Valley Oak site) travel back and forth between DHS for some of their courses. That kind of variety didn’t exist in past years.
Several of our schools have also been labeled as being in “Program Improvement” under the provisions of NCLB, because not enough kids scored high enough on English and math portions of the STAR test. One of the provisions of PI is that parents of the affected school are given the option to enroll in a non-PI school in the district. Schools that are in PI are Montgomery, Birch Lane, Patwin, and Korematsu.
Davis Enterprise, March 31, 2013: Schoolhouse rocked: Parental choices can make waves
“Parents of elementary school students in the Davis Joint Unified School District have a lot of choices — which makes the schools situation a little complicated to explain.
And why it matters is even more complicated. Fewer students bike to their neighborhood schools, student populations are poorly distributed and federally mandated Program Improvement status throws a wrench into the works.”
…
“All in all, the number of students transferring between local elementary schools makes for an unusual situation. Scott Torlucci, who works for Davis Demographics Inc., the Southern California-based research firm that prepares enrollment projections for the Davis district, has told the school board he’s never seen a district with a higher percentage of transfers.”
Link to table showing numbers of “native” students at each elementary campus vs. students who live in the attendance area: link
That an interesting table. What I should really like to see, and what this table doesn’t show is the number of “native” Birch Lane students who choose the “Montessori Program”. Compared to the number of kids coming to the Montessori Program from other schools.
“Another factor is that in Davis, I would presume that the average distance that students must travel to get from home to school has increased over the decades. Why?”
Ummmm, let me see, closing neighborhood schools like Valley Oak in favor of outlying schools.
Another factor in this is how the “neighborhood school” lines are drawn by the district. While I live very close to Montgomery, and can access the school entirely by bike path, without crossing any roads, our “neighborhood school” is Pioneer. To get to Pioneer from my neighborhood kids need to cross Mace. A similar situation applies to Birch Lane. Neighborhoods blocks from Birch Lane are zoned Koramatsu.
As I understand it, these lines are partially drawn based on population demographics with the purpose of evenly spreading out student populations. Jeff Hudson sent me a link to the study that was conducted that lead to the current configuration a while ago. If anyone is interested I can try and find it.
Here is a link to the demographic study I mentioned above.
https://davis.csbaagendaonline.net/cgi-bin/WebObjects/davis-eAgenda.woa/files/MTI5OTEyOTM0MTI5Ny9kYXZpc2VBZ2VuZGEvNjQ5LzM5MTIvRmlsZXM=/03-03-11_djusd_2010-2011_projection_report.pdf
A related Davis Enterprise article, 1/14/14: Meetings will focus on safe routes to school
wdf1 – The first such meeting was yesterday at Montgomery. There was not a huge turnout but the principal was there and there was a good discussion. As the city moves forward with planned street maintenance (the backlog that has been talked about in recent budget discussions) there is an opportunity to take care of some of the issues raised in these reports related to striping, bike lane widths, etc. Providing input on the reports will enable us to do a better job at that. I hope parents/grandparents will attend the meeting in their school.