A school morning typically starts with students getting out of their parents’ cars or hopping off the school bus. But once a week at an elementary school in Marshall County, some students ride on a different kind of bus: one on their own two wheels.
A group of parents launched the Calvert City Bike Bus program this year for kids attending Calvert City Elementary, primarily those in third to fifth grade. Every Tuesday, elementary school students bike to school with parents riding along with them and some adults following along on their golf carts.
The program’s leader, Dustin Brown, is an avid bike rider and a father of a Calvert City Elementary student. He said that he wanted to start a bike bus locally after seeing a TikTok video of a similar program in Portland, Oregon and hopes that the success his program has found in western Kentucky leads other schools to pursue a similar program for their students.
“Even if you just have a few kids, if you can, you know, impact a few lives like that, it’s worth it,” Brown said. “It’s going to be up to parents in other districts or school systems to see that and say ‘Hey, let’s see if we can map out a route’ and just get something started.”
Calvert City was named a Bicycle Friendly Community earlier this year by the League of American Bicyclists, and is one of three cities in Kentucky with that designation. Brown thought that made the far western Kentucky city a good place to start a cycling program for young kids.
After reaching out to other parents on Facebook in the Marshall County community, creating a three-mile bike route and building bike racks for the school, the bike bus program started in late August with 10 kids ready to cycle to school.
“They wake up and they’re so excited. They’re all hollering and fired up, you know, and most days when they get to school, they’re dragging. They’re not like that,” Brown said.
Courtney Griggs’ daughter is one of those bikers. She said that she can tell a difference in her third grader’s attitude on bike bus days compared to other school days.
“She’s super easy to get up on bike bus day, super excited to see her friends. I think that getting up and getting moving really early in the morning probably helps them pay attention a little bit better during the day. They’re just more ready for the day at school,” Griggs said.
Brown said school performance and “mental awareness” are some of the benefits of exercising. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, students who are physically active usually have better grades, school attendance, cognitive performance and classroom behaviors.
Third grader Emily Childress said she has been enjoying the bike bus experience, even though it was a bit difficult at first.
“Well, it was a little bit hard to go up on the hills, and we got to stop a couple of times. It was really fun to see all my friends, and I was really happy doing it,” Childress said.
Although the program is geared toward older elementary students, Brown said that there are some younger students that participate with the help of their parents.
“We have some kindergartners that ride some mornings, and their mom follows them on a golf cart. They’ve got training wheels and everything, and they do great. They try hard, but they’ll fall back a little, and their mom helps them,” Brown said.
Brown said that the kids have started to understand the rules of the road and build skills to eventually bike by themselves.
“We’re not having to tell them where to be in the road. The first week that we did this, we were everywhere,” Brown said. “Now, we can just let them ride. They know what to do. They can get out and ride safe.”
With colder months approaching, Brown said that the group still plans on continuing the new weekly tradition – at least when there’s enough daylight.
