The Facts
Sidewalk Stompers is an award-winning program designed to change the way Tampa Bay thinks about active transportation starting from the beginning: our children. Join us in empowering the next generation to reset their own health and safety with a first simple step… let’s walk to school.
Our history:
Sidewalk Stompers launched its first Walk to School Wednesday program in spring 2016 at Roosevelt Elementary School. Offering student walkers and bikers encouragement… and prize incentives… we saw our numbers grow from 89 students at our first event to 250 students at Roosevelt in 2019, plus thousands more at our seventeen additional partner schools.
We track the number of students walking or biking in so we have data to ask for safer routes to school. Through our advocacy, our partner schools have received new and updated crosswalks, new school zone signage, repainted road designs for safer traffic patterns, new four-way stops, crossing guards, and bike racks.
Sidewalk Stompers is building on these accomplishments by increasing student and volunteer participation in the community, enacting outreach programs to other schools and neighborhoods to aid more students and more communities in effectively advocating for school zone safety infrastructure improvements, and continuing to work with planning officials to better address pedestrian safety needs when updating roads.
Sidewalk Stompers is filling a gap between macro-level planning and neighborhood-specific needs by focusing on the under-served underage students of our community.
Awards:
2017 Hillsborough Planning Commission Award for Community Engagement.
2018 Hillsborough County Council PTA Health and Safety Award for Roosevelt Elementary School’s Sidewalk Stompers Walk to School Wednesday program.
2019 Hillsborough County Council PTA Health and Safety Award for Coleman Middle School’s Sidewalk Stompers Road Safety program.
2019 American Planning Association Sun Coast Award for Public Outreach and Engagement.