{"id":16051,"date":"2016-12-14T12:09:40","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T17:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16051"},"modified":"2016-12-21T17:21:09","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T22:21:09","slug":"auroras-young-smart-commuters-honoured-for-pedal-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/auroras-young-smart-commuters-honoured-for-pedal-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora’s young Smart Commuters honoured for pedal power"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the time students get to Light of Christ Catholic Elementary School each morning, the bike racks are usually overflowing.
\nMonday, however, was a slightly different story as Aurora dug out from the first significant snow storm of the season. Many students left their bikes at home that day, but were more eager than ever to bring out their wheels the next day, strap on their helmets, and head in for another school session.
\nAfter all, they have a reputation to live up to now as Light of Christ Catholic Elementary School (CES) was recognized with the \u201cBike to School Week Award\u201d at Metrolinx\u2019 Smart Commute Awards.
\nThe Bike to School Award was instituted by Metrolinx to recognize a participating school in York, Durham, Peel, Halton, Toronto, and Hamilton with the highest percentage of students that biked to school during the designated Bike to School Week.
\n\u201cWe are part of an enhanced Healthy Schools program with York Region Public Health and throughout the program last year we participated in Bike to School Week,\u201d explains Light of Christ Principal Travis MacDonald. \u201cOne of our staff members documented how many kids bike to school every day over the course of the week and, at the end of the week, our results were submitted to Metrolinx to be tabulated. We found out this fall that we had won as the York Region school with the highest participation rate and it was very exciting for us.\u201d
\nLight of Christ Catholic Elementary School, which is located on McClellan Way in southwest Aurora, has put a huge focus in recent years on developing a school culture encouraging healthy, active lifestyles and healthy eating for its school community.
\nIn-school initiatives include healthy snack programs which sees upwards of 100 healthy snacks per day served up to students by dedicated parent volunteers. Outside programs are also brought in to engage students on how to get \u2013 and stay \u2013 active.
\n\u201cFor me, biking is a really easy thing to do,\u201d says student Matthew H. \u201cYou just put on a helmet and you can go. It takes you places. If I can get a bunch of people to start biking, you can go in groups, go to places with friends, and talk and stuff.\u201d
\nTyler D. agreed, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s good for the environment and it keeps us healthy and fit \u2013 but it is also fun.\u201d
\n\u201cMost of the time parents are working and sometimes they don\u2019t have the time to drive you,\u201d notes Eric M. \u201cYou can call up your friends sometime and say, \u2018Hey, do you want to bike to school?\u2019 If you want to go to the park, you can bike to the park. If you want to go to the forest, you can bike to the forest and go everywhere with your friends.\u201d
\nThroughout the course of Bike to School week, Light of Christ students were encouraged to grab their handlebars through morning announcements. An extra incentive was added thanks to York Region Public Health who donated bike helmets and bells for daily draws.
\nNow that they have their plaque ready to hang up, the Light of Christ community is not content to rest on their laurels. Once the snow and ice is cleared, they plan to fill those bike racks up again while also stepping up their game.
\n\u201cThis year, we have expanded our Healthy School Committee from parents and staff members to students,\u201d says Mr. MacDonald. \u201cWe have also partnered with the Healthy Kids Community Challenge and they are providing us with funding as well as expertise to expand and develop the school culture into a more physically healthy one.
\n\u201cTo bring a lot of these programs in and to offer the healthy snack program on a daily basis and serve as many snacks as we are does cost money. Funding is one of the hurdles we\u2019re facing and partnering with the Healthy Kids Community Challenge has been wonderful because they provide us with funding to do the things we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the time students get to Light of Christ Catholic Elementary School each morning, the bike racks are usually overflowing — and their efforts have been recently recognized by Metrolinx.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/2016-12-15-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4aT","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 07:06:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}