Bike to School Day

At Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Western Addition, the bike racks are filling up. Even with San Francisco's hills and often far-flung school assignments, Dorie Apollonio thinks she and her family have helped start a trend at the school ever since they started dropping the kids off by bicycle from their home in Parnassus Heights.

It's Bike to School Week. That's right -- the burgeoning event is no longer confined to a single day.

Kids at 40 schools this morning participated in San Francisco's biggest Bike to School Day yet. The level of participation, in the event's fourth year, reflects steady growth in levels of biking and walking to schools throughout the year.

The following story is being republished from the blog of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

Across the city this morning, kids and their parents hopped on bikes to get to school, many of them breaking out of a car commute routine that's no fun for either party.

Walking to school may seem like an unfortunate casualty of the San Francisco Unified School District's school assignment system, which aims to desegregate schools by prioritizing diversity over proximity when placing students. But as the school district launches its Safe Routes to School program tomorrow in conjunction with Walk to School Day, there is hope that schools could significantly increase walking and bicycling to and from school even with the dispersed student bodies most schools have.

Commuter convoys of students, parents, teachers, administrators and bicycle educators are expected to take part in tomorrow's first annual Bike to School Day in San Francisco, an effort to educate communities about the dangers of driving to school, and the healthy benefits of bicycling.