Safe Routes to Schools Archives

Safe Routes to Schools Marks a Banner Year

July 7, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Emilio Elenes

As we wrap up another incredible school year, we want to take a moment to celebrate the students, families, educators, and community partners who helped make the 2025–2026 school year a success for Safe Routes to Schools across Alameda County.

This year, we supported more than 300 schools with programs, events, and activities that encouraged students to walk, bike, roll, carpool, and take transit to school. Together, we continued building safer, healthier, and more connected school communities.

International Walk & Roll to School Day

Our biggest event of the year saw one of the highest participation levels in program history. More than 165 schools registered to participate, bringing thousands of students together to celebrate active transportation.

Based on reported participation data, we estimate that:

More than 9,000 students walked to school.
More than 3,700 students rolled to school by bike, scooter, skateboard, or other wheeled devices.
More than 2,900 students carpooled.
More than 1,000 students used public transit.

We were honored to have support from elected leaders, including Buffy Wicks and Liz Ortega, who joined schools in celebrating the event and promoting safe, sustainable transportation options for students.

A huge thank you to every student, family, teacher, and volunteer who helped make this year’s Walk & Roll Day such a memorable success!

Golden Sneaker Contest

Our annual Golden Sneaker Contest once again brought friendly competition and excitement to schools across Alameda County.

This year:

88 schools registered.
Nearly 16,000 students participated.
Students tracked their travel modes for two weeks while encouraging classmates to choose active and sustainable ways of getting to school.

Congratulations to Christensen Middle School in Livermore, our Platinum Sneaker Champion, for their outstanding participation and commitment to active transportation. This win is a first for a middle school and also for a TriValley School.

The Golden Sneaker Contest continues to be a powerful way for schools to build excitement around walking, biking, rolling, carpooling, and transit while fostering school spirit and healthy habits.

Bike to School Day

This year’s Bike to School Day was another exciting celebration of active transportation.

A total of 88 schools registered to participate. From the schools that reported their participation data, we saw:

More than 2,200 students biking to school
More than 400 students using scooters
More than 40 students skateboarding

These numbers represent thousands of students choosing active transportation and discovering the fun, freedom, and confidence that comes from biking and rolling to school.

Year-Round Walk & Roll Activities

In addition to our countywide events, schools participated in ongoing Walk & Roll activities throughout the year. Events such as Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day provided opportunities for students to learn about important moments in history while building community and promoting active transportation.

These ongoing events help reinforce healthy travel habits and keep students engaged throughout the school year.

Education and Safety Programs

Education remains a key part of the Safe Routes to Schools program. During the 2025–2026 school year, we delivered 41 educational presentations to students across Alameda County.

Topics included:

Travel training
Transportation storytime
Rail safety education
Go green presentations

These interactive programs helped students learn important safety skills, explore transportation options, and understand the environmental benefits of choosing active and sustainable travel.

Looking Ahead

None of this work would be possible without the dedication of our school communities, families, volunteers, community partners, and district staff. Together, we are helping create safer routes to school while encouraging lifelong healthy habits.

Thank you for making the 2025–2026 school year one to remember. We look forward to another year of walking, biking, rolling, and connecting communities across Alameda County.

Reboot Your Commute Brings Mode Shift to Local High Schools

May 26, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Stephanie Jim

In the early morning hours of February and March school days, high school students across Alameda County changed their usual commute. Led by student leaders at 16 schools, the Safe Routes to Schools Reboot Your Commute event encouraged high school students to try something new and use active and shared modes of transportation, including biking, walking, rolling, taking transit, and carpooling.

Opening new avenues of travel to young people

Reboot Your Commute is an annual event coordinated by Transform staff. It’s grown in popularity over time, with more students participating each year.

The goal is to create a countywide conversation about the impact of travel choices on our health, safety, community, and environment. Student leaders facilitate events at their schools by setting up welcome tables and creating spaces for their peers to share how they got to school, plus their thoughts and preferences around active and shared transportation. To generate excitement and draw a crowd, student leaders played a bike and pedestrian trivia game and pedaled up bike-blended smoothies.

Participating students were also entered into a drawing to win a $50 Clipper Card or a scooter and helmet.

Student voices on mobility choices

In talking to students after the event, we learned more about the impact of their transportation choices. Aryana Jamwal, the youth event leader at Granada High School in Livermore, told us, “[Reboot Your Commute] made me more conscious about driving. I tried to drive less by myself, and I’m trying to carpool with friends more to practice what you preach.”

Other insights and concerns we heard from students in Livermore:

When parents were unavailable in the morning, students had to figure out how to walk to school and time their commute to arrive on time.
Livermore isn’t the most walkable city. There were lots of concerns about getting to places like the mall without reliable, safe transportation.
Lack of knowledge about how to get to destinations without a car was a barrier to active mobility.
Commuting with friends in the morning helped students stay positive and open to trying new things that expanded their minds.

More in store next year

Aryana would like adults out there to know that “The chance to walk, scooter, or bike keeps you grounded rather than staying on your phone in the car.” Parents and caregivers can help students by carpooling. “It is a good thing so different kids in our neighborhood can go to school, help the environment, and relieve stress for the adults.”

For students across the county, these fun events are just the start of conversations we will continue with help from the Youth Task Force, high school students gaining leadership skills by supporting active and shared transportation. As we close out this school year, we’re looking forward to next year and the impact these inspiring youth leaders will make on their communities in the years to come.

Alameda County Students Embrace Bike to School Day

May 26, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Adrian Cárdenas

This year’s Bike to School Day was one of the biggest celebrations we’ve seen across Alameda County, with students, families, educators, and community leaders coming together to celebrate the joy of biking, rolling, and active transportation. Transform staff spread out to volunteer and soak in all the happiness on two wheels.

More biking = more joy

Alameda County schools all the way from Livermore to Berkeley joined the celebration, creating an incredible sense of energy and community throughout the region.

Elected leaders supported students

Local leaders joined students and school communities during the morning celebrations.

The mayor of Pleasanton celebrated with students at Donlon Elementary School.
The mayor of Alameda joined students and families at Edison Elementary School.

A community of supporters and partners makes Bike to School Day great

We also want to give a huge thank you to our local partners who helped make this celebration even more special. Oaklandish generously donated T-shirts from their collaboration with AC Transit, celebrating 65 years of service in the East Bay, for the school champions who organized celebrations at their schools. Both the Oakland Ballers and Oakland Roots donated tickets for participating schools. Their support helped bring even more excitement and community spirit to this year’s event.

A special shoutout to Bike East Bay for organizing Bike to Wherever Day and continuing to help build excitement around biking and active transportation throughout the East Bay.

Thank you to every school champion, volunteer, educator, parent, and student who helped make this year’s Bike to School Day such a success. Your energy and dedication continue to inspire communities across Alameda County.

Alameda Bike Festival Brought Sunshine on Two Wheels

May 12, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Nia Thompson

The sound of whistles filled the air as kids followed the loops and turns of the Bike Rodeo, and other workshops on the grounds of Ruby Bridges Elementary School. Although the weather was overcast, gloomy skies couldn’t overshadow the joy at this year’s Alameda Bike Festival.

Safety first

The festival — organized each year by Transform, in partnership with the City of Alameda, and with help from many others — offers education, freebies, and a variety of fun activities all in the pursuit of bike safety and encouraging cyclists of all ages and proficiency to get around Alameda.

This year, the festival featured a helmet giveaway, helmet decorating, face painting, and bike repair. There were safe riding classes for riders of all ages, and the Bike Rodeo course helped the youngest riders learn to pay attention to the road while having a blast.

Community support makes a festival

This year, the event was co-hosted with the city’s Electrification Faire, where residents could learn about switching to electric appliances and vehicles. AC Transit brought out a bus bike rack, which people could use to practice loading and unloading their bikes. BORP came through with an adaptive cycling display, and many other community booths featured games and prizes. Alameda’s mayor, Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, also came out to join the fun!

Launching the West Alameda Mobility for All project

The Alameda Bike Festival is one of the ways Transform has grown deep roots in Alameda, building relationships with community and governmental organizations and working together with Alamedans to make their island city more bikeable, walkable, and transit-rich.

So the festival was the perfect place to launch our new project, funded by the California Air Resources Board, to assess community needs for better transportation options in West Alameda. We had a station staffed by Site Level Team members, stipended West Alameda residents who inform the project plan and support with outreach, to collect input on people’s transit modes and mark unsafe spots on the street grid.

Thank you to everyone who made the Alameda Bike Festival a huge success. We’re looking forward to continuing our work with the community in the West Alameda Project and beyond.

Alameda County Schools Went for the Gold

May 8, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Sheila Islam

Every spring, our Safe Routes to Schools team puts on one of the most anticipated events of the school year, the Golden Sneaker contest. Classrooms compete to see who will walk, roll, bike, carpool, or take transit to school at the highest percentage during the two-week contest. The winners get the coveted trophy: Golden State Warriors’ sneakers donated by the Warriors Foundation, painted gold. The school with the highest percentage of participating students gets the Platinum Sneaker award.

Transform staff making the Golden Sneaker trophies.

A big year for Golden Sneakers

This year, more than 15,000 students from 88 schools participated in the contest. During the contest, caregivers and school staff organize walking school buses, bike trains, assemblies, and other activities to create excitement around the contest.

Our Safe Routes team supports the event with prizes, like special sparkly golden shoelaces, and, of course, the famous golden sneakers. Our sneaker painting party was lots of fun!

And the Golden Sneaker Award Goes To…

While the Golden Sneaker goes to the winning classroom for participating school, the Platinum Sneaker goes to the school with the best overall participation during the Golden Sneaker Contest. For the first time ever, the Platinum Sneaker goes to a middle school: Christensen Middle School in Livermore. It’s also the first time a TriValley school has taken the prize in five years.

Three-quarters of Christensen students walked, rolled, carpooled, or took transit to school during the contest, an impressive level of participation. Big shout-out to these up-and-coming sustainable transportation users!

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Connecting Residents with Active Transportation in Hayward

February 3, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools, Transportation/by Emilio Elenes

Thanks to a grant from the California Air Resources Board, Transform and our partners are working with the City of Hayward to help more residents get around by biking and walking. We’re still early in the project, but we’re starting to see results.

The City of Hayward has already gotten bikes into the hands of Hayward residents. The first event was in October, and the city is planning on hosting many more public events for students and residents to pick up their bikes.

Community assessments

In keeping with Transform’s mission to lift up underrepresented voices, we conducted surveys to assess unmet active transportation needs.

We were pleased to learn that some students are already using bikes to get around, demonstrating a strong interest in active transportation when access allows. However, for students who did not have a bike, the most common barrier was cost. Financial limitations continue to prevent students from accessing reliable transportation options.

Among students who owned a bike but were not riding regularly, maintenance issues — such as flat tires, broken brakes, or lack of basic repairs — were primary reasons their bikes went unused. These challenges underscore the importance of pairing infrastructure investments with education, equipment, and hands-on support.

Addressing these gaps is a core goal of the Hayward Rides project. By combining bikes, maintenance support, and safe infrastructure, Transform and its partners are working to remove barriers and make biking a realistic, reliable option for students who want to ride.

The City of Hayward has worked with a local bike shop to build bikes for Hayward residents. Transform identified a handful of students from Tennyson High School to receive the bikes.

Infrastructure awareness

Making the transition from driving to walking or biking also means finding new routes where traffic is calmer and there’s more infrastructure. Part of Transform’s work in this project will be to educate residents about new crosswalks and safe bike routes. Finding the best route to a destination can greatly increase the likelihood that someone will successfully adopt biking as their preferred travel mode.

Transform has partnered closely with the City of Hayward to gather input from school administrators and community members during the planning phase of infrastructure improvements at ten Hayward Unified schools: Burbank, Faith Ringgold, Longwood, Martin Luther King Jr., Park, Schafer Park, Southgate, Tennyson, Tyrrell, Winton, and Palma Ceia. This community-informed approach ensures that upcoming changes reflect real needs and everyday travel patterns.

At the same time, Transform’s programs team has been working inside these ten infrastructure schools to build excitement, connection, and a culture of walking and rolling. Through events like International Walk and Roll to School Day, the Ruby Bridges Walk and Roll Day, and other recurring monthly activities, students and families are becoming more comfortable getting around by walking and rolling.

The goal is simple and powerful: when infrastructure improvements are complete, schools receiving these upgrades should see even higher rates of walking and rolling, turning temporary events into lasting, healthy habits.

Next steps in Hayward

Looking ahead, Transform is preparing for the next phase of the Hayward Rides program by deepening our engagement with families and the broader community. A key focus will be working with parents to recruit and support parent leaders who can facilitate community walk and roll events. These efforts will be especially important once infrastructure improvements are complete in fall 2026, helping ensure that new investments translate into lasting changes in how families travel.

Transform also plans to partner with the City of Hayward at community events to share bike safety education and active transportation resources.

Hayward Rides partners

Safe Routes to Schools Includes Protecting Families from ICE

January 7, 2026/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Transform Staff

Safe Routes to Schools is dedicated to keeping families safe, not only on the streets while walking and rolling to school, but at home and within their communities as well. As ICE raids grow more frequent and aggressive around the country, the Safe Routes community is standing up to make sure kids get to school safely, no matter their immigration status or that of their families.

Quick response and foot patrols

On October 22, 2025, federal immigration agents were expected to arrive in Alameda County as part of a large-scale enforcement operation. As news spread, communities across the Bay Area quickly came together to support and protect one another. Still, school attendance was down on the days ICE was expected (the increased raids mostly never materialized in the Bay Area), highlighting the need to provide protection from many types of hazards to ensure that all children can get an education.

This moment reinforced what Safe Routes to Schools knows firsthand: safety must always come first when promoting walking and rolling to school.

In Oakland and other cities across the East Bay, the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) began to equip community members with the tools they needed to organize foot patrols as a rapid response to ICE’s presence near school campuses. It supported trainings for volunteers who can be visible and welcoming during school pickup and drop-off times and who are also ready to initiate Alameda County’s Rapid Response Protocol, should the need arise. ACOE also provided reflective vests, whistles, and air horns to volunteers to help them establish a safe pathway to each school site.

Similar community-led responses also took place in Hayward, where residents mobilized to monitor and respond to federal enforcement activity. These efforts were rooted in care, visibility, and collective action to help families feel safer during school drop-off and pickup times.

How to get involved

It takes a village to protect vulnerable students and families. If you’d like to be part of this positive, proactive movement to help students get to school safely, there are many ways to help out.

Participate in community foot patrols or rapid response networks

Attend trainings or webinars on community safety and immigrant rights

Safe Routes to Schools Walking School Bus Webinar

Walking School Bus Toolkit

Where to find information

Local community-based organizations and rapid response networks

School-Based Resources in Response to Federal Actions

Link to print your own redcards

Ask school front office staff how you can best support them in alignment with school policies and procedures.

Know Your Rights materials from trusted immigrant advocacy groups

The Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP) Hotline is open and taking calls. If you are in Alameda County and witness Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in action, suspect ICE activity in progress, or if you or someone you know is detained by ICE, please contact the hotline at (510) 241-4011 during the operating hours of 6 AM – 6 PM. Priority will be given to calls related to ICE arrests.

Even before the escalated threat, a community member from the Tri-Valley Women’s Action Group had reached out to our programs team to share that families, particularly those with mixed status, needed support getting their children to school safely. In response to her request, Safe Routes to Schools hosted a webinar on organizing walking school buses as a community-based safety strategy. Leading up to the webinar, as a response to the threat of ICE, our team worked with community members to help set up a walking school bus, ensuring students could travel to and from school with added visibility, safety, and support.

And though the Bay Area hasn’t seen the large-scale raids and militarized enforcement that some other parts of the country have, tensions have remained high. ICE has targeted guardians in school drop-off and pickup lines. An attempt to take a parent into custody outside Hoover Elementary School in West Oakland last November sparked community outrage and led to increased foot patrols to protect students and families.

Protecting families

At its core, Safe Routes to Schools is about more than transportation — it’s about dignity, safety, and ensuring all families can access school without fear. Walking school buses, foot patrols, and community coordination are just some of the ways Safe Routes supports communities that are stepping up to protect kids and families during uncertain times.

Our team has been actively building relationships with local foot patrol organizers and identifying ways to meaningfully support these efforts through our programming and resources. Through this work, we have had the opportunity to observe and participate in community-led patrols, which has been both informative and deeply inspiring.

Organizers and volunteers are proactively training, sharing information, and developing clear protocols to respond to potential ICE encounters near public schools. It’s encouraging to see so many community members willingly commit their time to foot patrols across the East Bay.

While the number of reported cases of ICE targeting people at school sites in Alameda County has not been as high as in Southern California, particularly in and around Los Angeles, the level of preparation, coordination, and care within Bay Area communities increases safety for all. These efforts reflect a strong sense of collective responsibility and readiness, especially around schools with predominantly Latino student bodies. The presence of organized, informed, and visible community members has helped foster a sense of safety, trust, and solidarity around school campuses that helps students feel safe to come to class.

In response to yesterday’s horrific killing of Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agents, Transform condemns the violence, deportations, and arrests perpetrated by the Trump regime.

International Walk and Roll to School Day Rolls Through Alameda County

October 29, 2025/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Transform Staff

International Walk and Roll to School Day (IWR2SD) takes a large number of cars off the road every October, reducing congestion and making the trip to school easier, safer, and more pleasant. On October 8, 2025, we saw mode shift in action, with more students walking than driving. It was a great start to a year of active and shared transportation activities for Alameda County Safe Routes to Schools.

This year, Transform took an extra step and invited California state assemblymembers and senators to join the fun. A big thanks to Assemblymember Liz Ortega, who attended IWR2SD at Proctor Elementary in Castro Valley, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who joined the fun at Emerson Elementary in Berkeley.

“This was my first year planning International Walk and Roll to School Day, and something that really stood out to me, especially a couple of weeks after the event, was how easy it is to get caught up in the numbers. I found myself focused on how many schools had registered, how much data we collected, or even how many pencils to send to each site,” said Emilio Elenes, a program coordinator for Transform.

“But one day, while sitting in the back of a Lyft on my way to present about a walking school bus, I took a moment to reflect on how much community effort goes into hosting an event at a school,” Elenes continued. “For example, my school in San Lorenzo hadn’t hosted IWR2SD in a few years, and even though the event was small and simple, it made a huge difference in the students’ morning. Moments like that make all of this worth planning for.

“As a program coordinator, I feel lucky to experience these full-circle moments often, and that’s what makes Transform so special.”

A total of 87 of the Alameda County schools that participated in IWR2SD reported their data.

Here’s the breakdown:

Walkers: 9,699
Rollers: 3,411
Carpoolers: 2,620
Bus/Transit Riders: 1,030
Solo Riders: 6,946

That’s 16,760 students walking, rolling, and carpooling across the county. A big thank you to all the teachers, administrators, parents, and students who helped make this year’s International Walk and Roll to School Day a safe and fun event for thousands of students in Alameda County.

What Safe Routes Priority Schools Can Expect Next Year

August 13, 2025/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Emilio Elenes

The Safe Routes Priority Schools program is a tailored approach to site coordination, designed to support schools selected based on their CalEnviroScreen and FRPM (free or reduced-price meal) scores. Our goal is to work with schools with high equity scores, because they may require additional support to fully participate in the Safe Routes to Schools Program due to different barriers, such as champion capacity, administration turnover, or district buy-in.

Inspiring more students to use active and shared transportation

Each year, Transform’s program staff chooses 15 new Alameda County schools to be in the program for the following school year. The priority designation gives schools more staff time and resources and enables site coordinators to establish meaningful, lasting relationships. For example, Schafer Park Elementary School in Hayward was a Priority School for the 2023/24 school year and worked closely with the Safe Routes Program to help inspire the next generation of walkers and rollers. Working with school champions, we were able to encourage participation in Safe Routes events throughout the school year and offer multiple services through the program.

The champion at Schafer Park Elementary, Jocelyn Ayala, received one of Transform’s Transformista awards in 2024. As Transform Program Director Jennifer Ledet said in presenting the award, “She was able to work with her Site Coordinator at Transform, Emilio Elenes, to bring many educational and encouragement activities and events to Schafer Park. Through her services as a Safe Routes to Schools Champion, she is getting the next generation excited about choosing walking, rolling, and taking transit.”

2025 Safe Routes priority schools

We work with school staff and parents at the end of the school year to ensure buy-in for the next year’s priority schools. This year’s schools are:

Bridges Academy at Melrose
EnCompass Academy
Lockwood STEAM Academy
Think College Now
Del Rey Elementary School
Hillside Elementary School
Lincoln High (Continuation)
Valley View Elementary
Alternatives in Action
Castlemont High School
Edendale Middle School
Highland Community School
La Escuelita
Madison Park Academy TK-5 School
Creekside Middle School

A higher level of support

At the beginning of the school year, Transform staff meet with priority schools to better understand their specific needs so we can tailor our support. The Safe Routes priority schools can also expect special events such as scooter and helmet giveaways for participating in each of the events that the Safe Routes to Schools team hosts: International Walk and Roll to School Day, the Golden Sneaker Contest, and Bike to School Day.

Our goal was to start early and set these schools up for success. We started preparing for the coming school year at the end of the last school year, reaching out and asking if schools wanted to participate. Each school has agreed to become a priority school, committing to participate in some capacity. Here are some of the opt-in agreements:

Select a parent, teacher, admin staff, or volunteer to champion SR2S at your school.
Meet with the site coordinator quarterly to implement SR2S activities, starting with a back-to-school meeting in the fall.
Participate in at least two big events or other activities, as appropriate.
Support SR2S with data collection.

These opt-in agreements are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the higher level of support Priority Schools receive. For some schools, this might mean our site coordinators help bridge the gap between parents and the school by listening to and addressing traffic safety concerns. For others, it could mean setting up a walking school bus to address parents’ fears about walking their children to school due to concerns about ICE. The Priority Schools program is, at its core, a tailored approach asking the questions: How can we make it safer for students to get to school? and, How can we spread the joy of walking and rolling to school?

Why does Safe Routes have priority schools?

We would love to give every school the same level of support we give to priority schools, and in order to make sure that happens over time, we pick 15 new schools each year to strengthen the foundation of their Safe Routes to Schools programming.

The extra connection and engagement with priority schools are special to our staff. And we hope that this prepares each school to continue with a stronger Safe Routes program in the years to come.

Safe Routes for the New School Year: Getting Ready to Walk and Roll

August 12, 2025/in Blog, Safe Routes to Schools/by Emilio Elenes

The Transform Programs team is excited to kick off another school year with the Safe Routes to Schools Program. Our Safe Routes team works with schools across Alameda County, providing resources, events, and hands-on support to help students get to school safely by walking, biking, carpooling, or taking transit. We partner with all public schools in the incorporated cities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Dublin, Emeryville, Fremont, Hayward, Livermore, Newark, Oakland, Piedmont, Pleasanton, San Leandro, and Union City — as well as the unincorporated communities of Ashland, Castlewood, Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview, Happy Valley, Hillcrest Knolls, San Lorenzo, and Sunol.

Preparing for the year ahead

Over the summer, our programs team comes together to map out the year, using the feedback we collected from school champions in May to make our offerings even better. We host Back to School Task Force meetings as well as one-on-one meetings to connect with school champions, share updates, and walk through all of the ways schools can get involved.

If you haven’t already, be sure to explore our wide range of services, from educational presentations on travel safety to free bike repair events and suggested routes to school maps.

More than just transportation

Safe Routes also works to address larger social challenges that impact how students get to school. For example, in some communities we’ve helped organize walking school buses, groups of students walking together with adult supervision to help ease fears of ICE detention and reduce chronic absenteeism.

Big events in 2025

Our countywide events bring students, families, and educators together to celebrate active and sustainable transportation.

International Walk and Roll to School Day – October
Golden Sneaker Contest – March
Bike to School Day – May

These events are great opportunities for schools to boost community spirit and encourage healthy, eco-friendly habits. Stay tuned for more event details and participation tips.