Bike Shelter Success

Our amazing bike shelter, built thanks to the grants we received through the program, has been a massive success.

We can confirm that it is wonderfully waterproof and very secure.

There are racks on both sided of the shelter to allow space for the massive burst of kids cycling and scootering - how about that 51% increase!

In the day-to-day, I work as the Learning Support Coordinator. My biggest project over the past two semesters has been attendance - working on boosting our regular attendance rate, and case managing families who have ongoing difficulties.

In our community, children often are responsible for getting themselves to school. Independence is a tricky thing, so we are always looking for ways to support our families to build workable routines. In the past, we have tried a walking school bus, and set walking routes for students to walk together, but it wasn't quite enough.

Then, the bike shelter was built at the end of Term 4. I had an inkling in the last week, when I suddenly saw an explosion of electric scooters, but it took until Term 1 for us to harness the power of the shelter in boosting attendance.

The students in the grid below are those I case managed with an emphasis on active transport. This looked like having explicit conversations about bike and personal safety, building morning routines where the students met me for breakfast and then took their scooters to the shelter for storage, and regular opportunities to show off their skills to the staff members responsible for locking and unlocking the shelter.

Soon, we saw this group of students coming to school more regularly, as well as earlier in the day, often with a friend or two on the scooter. The boys are all very proud of their scooters and like to talk about going to pick each other up to travel to school together. I am so proud of their consistent hard work and am glad that we are able to incorporate their interests positively in school life.