Halstead students get lessions in bicycle safety
Tue, 2015-06-02 10:53
david_morris
By PAMELA GRANT
Cove Leader-Press
The school year is almost over and soon children all over Cove will have an entire day to fill.
With that in mind, Hettie Halstead Elementary enlisted the help of a pair of Copperas Cove motorcycle officers to help teach their 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders about bicycle safety. After the assembly, 31 students had the opportunity to follow the officers on a bike run around the block.
Sandra Ziehlke, the parent involvement coordinator, said that this month is National Bike Month and that although May 6 was National Ride a Bike to School Day, they were not able to hold the event on that day. Still, they wanted to hold the event before the school year ended and settled on celebrating it last Thursday.
“With school ending here shortly, these kids are gonna be out on their bikes a lot more than they use them right now,” said Ziehlke. “We want to make sure they know some bicycle safety. And who better than our Copperas Cove police to give them the do’s and don’ts and the rules of riding bicycles in the community. We want them to be safe.”
The officers, James Dudden and John Oster taught the kids how to stay safe while riding a bike as well as what the laws say about bike riding. The officers said that a lot of people don’t know the actual laws with regards to bicyclists.
They talked about wearing helmets and pads, making sure that if it’s a one person bike then only one person is riding it, and making sure that bicyclists don’t ride in the middle of the road. One of the bike facts that got the biggest reaction out of the kids came when the officers revealed that bicyclists have to stop at stop signs and that they could get a ticket if they failed to do so.
“I didn’t know that you couldn’t ride on the back pegs of a bike. And that you have to stop at a stop sign. I didn’t know that either,” said 3rd grader, Martin Linse (8). “I don’t want a ticket.”
All of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders attended the bicycle safety assembly, but only those 31 students who brought their bikes as well as a signed consent form were able to participate in the bicycle run. The students, accompanied by the two officers and a staff member rode their bicycles around the block following the conclusion of the assembly.