Thank you for the sidewalks, Evergreen

For the past 11 years, I have had the honor of serving as the very proud superintendent of the Evergreen School District. On behalf of the Evergreen Board of Trustees, staff, students, families, and community, I would like to thank everyone for their work to help our geographically small, rural, unincorporated community see the dream and vision of sidewalks for safe routes to school become a reality.

In 2005, almost 20 years ago, Evergreen Community Partners spearheaded Safe Routes to School in this community, which saw one mile of sidewalks installed from U.S. 2 to East Evergreen Elementary School in 2009. In 2021, Evergreen Community Partners initiated Phase I of sidewalks for U.S. 2, and, three years later, after more meetings, discussions, and navigating challenges than I can list here, we have broken ground on sidewalks that will provide safe routes to school from Evergreen Junior High School to the intersection one mile south, and we are in the process of planning for Phase II, which will see sidewalks going north toward Reserve Street.

The Evergreen School District is in its 121st year of continuous operation and is one of the mostly densely populated school districts in Montana. Throughout these many years, this stretch of U.S. 2, a very busy corridor in northwest Montana, continues to see increases in traffic. Alongside this busy traffic, many of our students often walk or ride their bikes to school each day, as we do not receive state funding to provide bus transportation due to the geographical size of our district. As a result, we have a high number of students walking along the highway in the mornings and afternoons each school day. Without proper sidewalks on U.S. 2, students are sometimes forced to walk on the actual highway, as snow piles in the winter and dirt and mud in other seasons make the shoulders of the road almost impossible to walk on.