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Cleveland Police officers, along with students and their parents, set out on a 20 mile bike ride across the city, each mile creating new memories with officers, hoping to inspire the next generation to wear blue.
The city of Cleveland plans to tear down more than 500 vacant properties to improve safety for students who walk to and from school and to eliminate some of the stress that keeps students from fulfilling their academic potential.
Mayor Frank Jackson unveiled the program recently as part of his Healthy Neighborhoods initiative. The three houses demolished Thursday are the first of 500 abandoned homes that are within 500 feet of a grade school that the city intends to drop this year.
As bike sharing gains momentum across the country, one CMSD student is preparing to launch a similar program that aims to give Cleveland's children a form of safe and reliable transportation.
For parents of children who walk or ride their bicycles to school, CMSD has maps outlining preferred routes.
Six CMSD schools will pilot a bicycle and pedestrian safety program for second-graders this spring.
Teams will walk streets near as many as 19 CMSD schools next week to assess conditions that discourage children from walking or bicycling to school.
The city of Cleveland and CMSD will map routes to help children in kindergarten through eighth grade walk and bike to school as safely as possible.