The City of Soldotna’s Safe Routes to School has partnered with a variety of agencies to focus on children being more visible along roadways.
Brad Nelson with Central Emergency Services will be presenting to Soldotna schools over the next two weeks.
Nelson: “They have looked at several different options for making kids safer while getting to school. Some of the things that they’ve looked at is improving sidewalks, improving lighting, putting in some more of the flashing signs to protect the kids. One of the other things that they found is getting reflective material on the kids, a lot of kids today are wearing dark clothing with nothing you’d be able to see in snowing or bad weather conditions. They’re trying to encourage wearing reflective material, one of the ways they’re doing that is actually going to be giving the kids a reflective snow hat with the school mascot on it, it’s got a little bit of reflective material on it, it’s actually a pretty good looking little hat.”
He said starting tomorrow they will visit elementary schools and while they distribute hats they will also be making presentations on why reflective materials are important and giving other safety tips like staying on sidewalks and crosswalks.
Nelson listed the schools on the schedule so far.
Nelson: “Tomorrow we’ll start at K-Beach Elementary, then after that next week we’re going to be continuing to Redoubt Elementary and then later in the week we’re going to be hitting Soldotna Elementary and Soldotna Montessori, both of them at the same time.”
Pegge Erkeneff with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District said the funding for the hats came through Soldotna’s Safe Routes to School program which had received a grant.
As we previously reported, last November a 10 year old girl was struck by a car’s mirror off of Poppy Ridge Road while walking to her bus stop., she did not receive serious injuries.