Safe Routes to School Parent Survey
Chelsea Biklin ChelseaB@cupertino.org
Feb 18,2016
(SR2S) program used an online parent survey to collect data from seven schools in Cupertino to assess school transportation trends. The seven schools were surveyed: Cupertino High School, Monta Vista High School, Kennedy Middle School, Hyde Middle School, Lawson Middle School, Sedgwick Elementary School, and Lincoln Elementary School.
This online survey was made available to every parent at each school to fill out online and publicized through a combination of City communications (webpage, Facebook, Twitter, NextDoor), FUHSD and CUSD communications, and various individual school communication channels, as well as lawn signs with a link and QR code posted at each of the seven schools for parents to reference. This qualitative survey was anonymous, included 15 questions and a comments section, and asked questions of parents ranging from age and grade of child to modes of travel to attitudes about health and safety (survey is attached).
Participation Results: A total of 9,542 surveys were made available online and a total of 850 surveys were completed from all seven schools, making the survey response rate about 9%. This is typical and a fairly decent response rate for the SRTS Parent Survey (great job Cupertino families!).
Parent Survey Aggregate Summary Highlights: The completed surveys were sent to the National Center for Safe Routes to School. Results were compiled into individual school survey reports summaries and a combined-school aggregate report summary (see attached). Highlights from the Parent Survey Aggregate Survey and based on the survey respondents we learned that across all seven schools:
o About 78% of families live within 2 miles of school
o About 20% of students walk to school in the morning and about 27% walk home in the afternoon
o About 13% of students bike to and from school
o About 52% of students travel by single-family vehicle to school in the morning and about 40% from school in the afternoon
o About 14% of students carpool to school in the morning and about 17% do so in the afternoon
o On average for all seven schools, single family vehicle travel decreases in the afternoon and carpool travel increases in the afternoon (this is good)
o On average for all seven schools, walking increases in the afternoon (this is good)
o A total of 2,320 Cupertino students have asked for permission from their parents or guardians to walk or bike to/from school. That’s about 22% of the students who attend these seven schools, but remember only 9% of those families participated in the survey (the interest is there!)