By Louis Zylka
The 830Times
The Del Rio cycling community is about to grow, as Dr. Fermin Calderon Elementary School was gifted with training bicycles for their kindergartners to learn and use at school.
More than 100 kindergarten students were taken out of their classes on Wednesday to go to the gym at the school for a “big surprise.” The students were shown 24 balance-to-pedal conversion bicycles designed for training in their physical education (PE) classes.
The bicycles were given by All Kids Bike, a kindergarten program by Strider Education Foundation Inc., offering a curriculum for PE teachers to teach kids to ride bicycles designed for kindergartners.
During the reveal, many of the kids were given the chance to try the bicycles by pushing them around the gym. Community leaders and parents of the students were at the event to see their
children get excited and try using the bicycles for the first time.
The Del Rio Parks Foundation, a local non-profit organization, helped raise $9,000 to get the bicycles for Calderon Elementary. Jake Carsten, director of trail development with the Del Rio Parks Foundation, said the organization helped raise funds for the All Kids Bike program. He said they reached $9,000 in early August.
Coach Claudia Juarez, lead PE teacher for the San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent
School District and the lead PE coach for Calderon Elementary, said she got in touch with Carsten to bring the All Kids Bike program to her students, adding she wanted to “set an example for the other schools” and start the program at Calderon Elementary.
“I feel like nowadays, kids don’t ride bikes anymore . . . I blame it on social media and games and being online, which is fine, but when Carsten brought up the idea, I was super excited.
“We need to teach kids how to ride a bike because it is a ‘long-time’ sport. They can (ride) at home and use it as a mode of transportation (when they are older),” Juarez said.
Juarez mentioned the goal of starting the program at Calderon Elementary is to also expand it to all the Del Rio elementary schools in the future.
The students at Calderon Elementary will learn to use the bicycles in the spring of 2025.
