Safe Routes to School Grant includes Sioux Trail

Five (or so) years ago Dr. DeeDee Currier (Sioux Trail Principal at the time, now ISD 191 Board Member) and Denise Engberg (Media EA, Transportation EA and Technology EA) worked in partnership with the City of Burnsville to develop and apply for a Minnesota Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School Grant.  The initial grant application was a partnership between the City of Burnsville and ISD 191 to add a sidewalk along Highway 13 and install a path which connected the sidewalk and the school.  The City of Burnsville ended up allocating funds and completing the project two years ago with out funding assistance through the state of Minnesota.  Denise Engberg continued to submit the Sioux Trail portion of the grant proposal and worked with City of Burnsville staff, ISD 191 staff, contractors and other supporters to collect all of the required information for each application.  The feedback from MnDOT was positive, but the grant was never awarded - until now!

In a recent press release MnDOT announced 3.8 millions in grant awards and Sioux Trail is one of the sites receiving an award.   Sioux Trail was fortunate to have direct support from Jon Deutsch (ISD 191 Properties and Operation Director) as well as staff from Dakota County. The list of grant recipients, details about improvements at Sioux Trail and a story from KARE 11 are listed below.

There are many lessons here and this is an exciting opportunity for our students and families.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) announced Thursday the recipients of about $3.8 million in federal grants for projects to improve conditions for bicycling and walking to school.
The 16 grants come from the federally funded Safe Routes to School program.
"These projects will help make walking and biking to school easier for children and more acceptable to their parents," said MnDOT Commissioner Tom Sorel. "The grants will mean safety improvements in routes to school so students will be more inclined to walk to school. And walking to school is another way to increase exercise for healthier kids."
Of the 16 projects, 12 are in Greater Minnesota and the rest are in the Twin Cities metro. All of the grants will be used to improve or build trails and sidewalks for walking and biking.
MnDOT announced the availability of the grants in May and received 82 applications requesting $83 million in project money.
(Copyright 2011 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)

The Sioux Trail award as listed from MnDOT:
Burnsville $107,100
Construct a trail from the Highway 13 multi-use trail to the school, build new concrete sidewalk around the bike racks and install in-street school crossing signs.