Saratoga Springs board to consider modifying ban on riding bikes to schools

[katty]

more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=847190

By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer
First published in print: Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Editor's Note: To comment on this story, please visit our blogs: Saratoga Seen | Parent to Parent.
SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Seventh-grader Adam Marino is getting a firsthand lesson in civil disobedience.

The 12-year-old and his mother, Janette Kaddo Marino, are defying Saratoga Springs school policy by biking to Maple Avenue Middle School on Route 9. The Jackson Street residents pedal more than four miles together each way to the middle school on nice days despite being told not to by school officials and police.

"I guess you can say that we continue to do what we feel is our right," Kaddo Marino said recently. "We feel strongly we have a right to get to school by a mode of transportation we deem appropriate."

Their methods may be unconventional, but the Marinos are part of a growing number of Americans challenging the sedentary habits of today's youths and what they view as overanxious "helicopter" parenting. As fewer children walk and bike to school nationwide, parents have started groups like the "Walking School Bus," which promotes physical activity and fitness in youth by having them walk to school with adults.

[virgogal]

1. There is a ban? I'm speechless.

[katty]

2. i was too when i read this?!

[Captain Hilts]

7. It's hilly and icy much of the year. Kind of how sailors in Groton, Conn. were

prohibited from riding motorcycles. Same reason.

If there is a wide bike path, then certain times of year it would be fine to ride.

[orpupilofnature57]

3. I live in Ballston Spa and am familiar with that stretch of route 9 ,it has

as wide of a shoulder as any bi-way in the county.Bravo!!! roads that go to schools should take precedence over Commerce which I suspect is their priority ,they put a school in that area ,they should make it accessible to People,little ones especially.

[Captain Hilts]

8. Nobody's Fool.....I've been to the Bottle Museum!

[orpupilofnature57]

9. If Gideon Putnam just had to take a leak it would have been us ,with

the Track ,SPAC, and all the nice Shacks on North Broadway ,or thats what I tell my Saratogian Friends.

[LiberalFighter]

4. Do schools really have right to require how students are transported to school?

IMO the police absolutely have not authority to police such matter.

[virgogal]

5. The police don't make the laws,some idiot politicians did I assume.

[LiberalFighter]

12. From the article it was a school policy

[bhikkhu]

11. No, but you have to park your bike somewhere

It wouldn't take much for them to make it very impractical, if they wanted.

[KatyaR]

6. " . . .they were met by a state trooper . . . ."

Are you kidding me? I swear to god, this country has gone to crap. I understand being concerned about students and their safety, but should we wrap them up in cotton and make them stand in one place all day so they won't possibly get hurt? :grr:

If the parent approves it, and ESPECIALLY if they're riding with their child, let them ride. It's the parents' decision, not the schools.

[orpupilofnature57]

10. An abuse of law enforcement ,and Schools authority.