October 30th, 2015

Dear families of Millen Woods,

At Millen Woods we are excited and hopeful that many of our students and their families will continue to embrace the goals set forth last year when we began being a part of the School Travel Plan program. First and foremost, we want to improve and sustain the safety of all our children in our community and this is why we need your help!  If you must drive to our school and enter our parking lot (for the daycare facility or a meeting etc.) we are asking you to please SLOW DOWN and LOOK AROUND as there are many of us who are on foot, on bicycle, on skateboard etc. and are using the sidewalk in front of our school. We have witnessed already, some very stressful moments where a collision between car and people could have occurred and this is why we are trying to heighten everyone’s awareness of safety for our pedestrians.

There are signs posted to alert everyone in our community that there is a school crosswalk and to remind drivers to slow down when approaching this area. We are looking at having our Safety Patrollers back on the site, yet, we need to have all stakeholders support us with this additional support as these students take on the responsibility to help others and we need to collectively work together to assure their safety in doing so. Our Resource Community Police Officers have been out this past week to observe the area and are taking note of the traffic and will be issuing reminders to those who fail to observe the traffic expectations. As well, our Bylaw Officers will be doing random checks as part of the Safe Travel Plan program throughout the school year.

Walking to school has many health, environmental and social benefits and we encourage all of our students to walk with their friends and family members in all kinds of weather!  We Canadians are made of stern resolve, and as the saying goes….”there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing”…….we encourage everyone to dress appropriately for the weather conditions.  November 2nd through to November 6th is “WALK TO SCHOOL WEEK” and our students will be hearing encouraging announcements from various classrooms and viewing motivational posters and signs created by our students.

Most importantly, we wish to highlight the need for all drivers to slow down when approaching the school zone, and to look around before entering our parking lot to park and/or drop off a student – life gets busy, we understand that, and many of us have ‘schedules’ that compel us in the day to be punctual, yet, as much as you want to arrive on time here or elsewhere, we want you and all of our children to arrive!

We will continue to work together as a community to keep our routes to school, safe, secure and accident free. Thank you everyone for your continued diligence in this regard.