Becky Kallal

used to ride my bike downtown to work one day and run on alternate days, but a few years ago, I found that the traffic had become too much for me, so I gave up the cycling to work.

Do you feel that students are comfortable cycling (for at least part of their trip) to school? If not, why? What would you change to make cyclists feel more confident?
What we really need to make student and adult cyclists more comfortable are more designated cycle paths and lanes. I also think that we need to encourage parents to let their children bicycle–nowadays, so many parents don’t want their children to ever be out of their sight, so activities like cycling have fallen off in some families.

Numerous studies have established the relationship between increased physical activity and better academic achievement. As trustee, what specific actions will you take to encourage active transportation among students and staff?
We need to ensure that schools have safe bicycle storage racks. I think that we could work with the city to produce maps of neighborhood cycle and walk routes. We need to lobby for more paths and lanes.

How will you engage parents, principals and administrators to make health a priority, especially in regards to active transportation?

What policies and practices need to be changed or created to achieve this goal?
I don’t think that the issues lies with school-based or school district-based policies. As far as I can tell, all schools are supportive of students using active (walking or cycling) transportation. This is far more an issue within the home.

Because of the open-boundary, program-based school system in Edmonton, many students travel long distances to school. How would you encourage active transportation given this fact?
I am a fan of neighborhood schools, but the culture in Edmonton is much more of a program-based nature. I really don’t know how to encourage active transport for children who are bussing or being driven across the city every day.

School closures discourage active transportation by increasing travel distances. Would you encourage study of the student health (and correlated academic) consequences of school closures?
I don’t know a lot about factors that can affect studies, but I do wonder how one would isolate other factors and control for unknowns in studying student health as a consequence of school closure. I would be open to learning more about this.

An initiative in Nova Scotia, which included opening school gyms after hours for non-competitive sport activities, saw a 72% reduction in obesity rates. What innovative ways would you propose to increase school utilization and physical activity?
We have a joint use agreement with the city through which many of our school gyms are open to groups after school hours. We are always looking at ways of using our schools within the community and for the community, and we need to continue to do so. Regarding “innovative ways” of increasing physical activity, I find that rarely do you find success when the ideas for something come from people who already buy-into it. This is no different. We need to get parents and children who are not physically active to find innovative ways of becoming so, and then we will find ways of supporting them. Can they think of some program they would like to put into a gym after school hours? If so, I can work to help them, but the other way around is just never effective in the long-run.

Do the schools in your ward have adequate, secure bicycle parking?
As I have mentioned, I think this is an area that we should work on.

What kind of education programs would you engage in to encourage effective cycling?

What would you do to discourage students being dropped-off/picked-up in private vehicles?
In a city where many students attend program-based schools and where many parents do not want their children riding public transit, I’m not sure if this is where we should be looking in order to get students more active. We could look at drawing a boundary around each school and working with parents living within the boundary to get their children coming to school through active transportation.

Do you have a recent photo of yourself riding your bicycle? Please send it to us digitally!
No, sorry. Thanks for the opportunity to complete the survey and best wishes to you.