FAYETTEVILLE -- Bicycle lessons in physical education classes mean school districts now have hundreds of bicycles to maintain and repair.
The Bentonville and Fayetteville school districts established elective courses within their alternative programs involving students keeping the bicycles in riding condition. Instructors see potential for not only maintaining bicycles for their districts, but also for assisting community organizations.
Fayetteville has had bicycles for about six years in some elementary schools, but the program grew to about 500 bicycles three years ago with grants, said Holly Johnson, district spokesman.
The fleet provided bicycles for every school to use for physical education classes from third grade through high school, Johnson said. The district now has a mountain bike team.
Fayetteville High School Principal Denise Hoy asked longtime Agee Lierly Life Preparation Services teacher Leverett Archer if he would teach the bicycle repair class. Archer primarily teaches credit recovery classes, but he went through a training program last summer about repairing bicycles and instructing students in the process.
The program began this fall. Archer started it from scratch and he reached out to organizations within the Northwest Arkansas cycling community.
Archer's networking efforts led him to Jason Swim, who oversees the bicycle shop class at Gateway, an alternative learning school in the Bentonville district. Swim offered Archer encouragement, and on Tuesday took his students to help Archer's students work on bicycles. Students said the meeting was awkward at first.
Swim structured his program to train students to be professional technicians. They wear mechanic shirts and carry business cards. Bicycle repair started as the Bentonville School District built up a grant-funded program that provided 600 bicycles.
Bicycle programs also exist in some Rogers schools and in Springdale School District.
At one point, the district had a backlog of bicycles needing repair, Swim said. Through trial and error, Swim developed a process for streamlining repairs. Swim was excited to hear about Fayetteville's program and offered to help.
Archer also wanted Swim's input on tools and supplies that are useful in a bicycle repair shop.
Students in Fayetteville's class learn skills they can apply to their personal and work lives, including how to read a manual and follow step-by-step instructions, Archer said. He assigns two students to a bicycle so they learn teamwork.
As Archer learns more, he hopes to build the program and is interested in paying student interns to work in the bicycle repair shop, he said.
Swim and Archer also are interested in expanding their programs to help charities, such as Pedal It Forward NWA, an organization that accepts old bicycles, repairs them and gives them to veterans, homeless shelters and families in need.
Pedal It Forward NWA started two years ago with a motto of "Everybody needs a bike," said Steve Marquess, a volunteer with the group. The group has provided hundreds of bicycles and helmets to families and veterans in Northwest Arkansas and nearby communities in Oklahoma and Missouri.
The all-volunteer organization has a core group of about eight people who have been assisted by a couple dozen other individuals, Marquess said. The nonprofit organization has a workshop with five stands where people gather on Monday nights and Saturday mornings to repair bicycles.
If other groups want to work on bicycle projects, Pedal It Forward can provide space and bicycles, Marquess said. He also sees a need for people who have received bicycles to have a place they can take their bicycles for repair. He's interested in working with the bicycle shop teachers and their students, he said.
When Archer began working at the campus now housing the Agee Lierly program, what was known as the Fayetteville High School West Campus offered vocational and technical programs. That focus changed in 2005, Archer said.
Programs in construction trades, culinary arts, auto mechanics and child care no longer are offered at the Agee Lierly campus, Archer said. Opening a bicycle repair shop on the campus gives students a class that is different from reading chapters in a textbook and answering questions, he said.
"I was happy to realize there's a shop class back on the West Campus again," Archer said.
Metro on 11/21/2016