By Anne Ternus-Bellamy page B5 | January 27, 2017

Crossposted from the Davis Enterprise

Hey kids, want to save a polar bear? Tell your parents to leave the car at home and walk or bike to school next month instead.

All Davis school children will be able to participate in the Polar Pedal throughout February. For every trip to school made on foot or bicycle, kids will earn a point. Every 500 points equals a polar bear, and the goal is for the Davis Joint Unified School District to save 20 polar bears through Polar Bear International.

Can Davis school children really make 10,000 trips on foot or by car in February? Well, they made 8,000 such trips last February, so surely the goal is in reach.

Trips will be recorded through the Active4.me scanning program donated to all Davis schools by local resident Tim Starback and each school will have a goal chart to track students’ progress throughout the month. Students can still sign up for Active4.me if they haven’t already. Visit http://active4.me.

“I have been hearing that the kids are super-excited about helping polar bears,” said Loretta Moore, the city’s Safe Routes to School program coordinator.

Best of all: “Each school will have the opportunity to name a bear,” she said.

The program is funded in part by a grant from Kaiser Permanente.

To learn more about Polar Bear International, visit http://www.polarbearsinternational.org.

 

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Holmes Junior High School students bike home Wednesday using the added lanes adjacent to the school property. Fred Gladdis/Enterprise photo

 

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Holmes Junior High School students bike home Wednesday using the new safety lanes at the intersection of J Street and Drexel Drive. Fred Gladdis/Enterprise photo