Green Town Los Altos adopts Freiker!

A bit of news from the CA trenches.... Green Town Los Altos (GTLA) is a group of about 100+ influential community leaders and philanthropy groups who are focused on reshaping the City of Los Altos for the future. GTLA and the city council are focused on building a culture that is more community oriented with a vibrant downtown infrastructure and establishing community values of energy conservation, use of alternative energy sources, green building standards for new development, transportation alternatives for downtown access, waste management and educational programs targeted at the schools.

I've been to 2 of their forums to talk to them about Freiker - one I sort of just showed up and the 2nd time I was invited (that's always a good sign :) Last night I was invited to attend an advisory board strategy meeting where they spent 3 hours talking about their strategic goals for the next 2 years. They ended up adopting 4 programs - the one that got the most recognition and votes by the advisory board and city council as fitting with the values of the town and showing promising results was Freiker!

GTLA is going to target 3 schools next year: Gardner-Bullis, Covington, Egan (a middle school) and Loyola are the most likely candidates - several of them already have volunteers that have stepped up to be the wheels. I am going to be the committee organizer for this effort and part of what we need to do is settle on the final 3 schools and define the 'Freiker In A Box' program for getting them started. The funding will come from GTLA. I will be going to each of the schools over the next month to talk to both students and parents about Freiker. Included with Freiker will be a bicycle safety curriculum that will be introduced at these schools - bicycle advocacy and bicycle safety training were introduced in the Palo Alto school system many years ago and today about 33% of the Palo Alto and Gunn high schools students ride their bikes to HS...

This is progress. While it is only 3 schools next year, if all goes well it will be all Los Altos School District elementary schools the following year!

Every Ride Counts!