Pacific Beach Middle School students now have a secure way to store their e-bikes thanks to the initiative of a former student.

In late May, new e-bike racks were installed on the campus. The project cost around $15,000, funded by Whole Site Modernization Funds, said Ashley Hensen, PBMS’ International Baccalaureate coordinator.

The installation was prompted by the community service project of former student Kiley Everett, who during the 2022-23 year conducted a study of the number and types of bicycles students were riding to campus. She did this for her eighth grade community service project.

Everett is now a rising sophomore at Mission Bay High School.

“It is great to see a project come full circle in a relatively short period of time,” Everett said.

Her project, “E-bike Racks for PBMS,” was inspired by a need she was experiencing when traveling to campus. Her collected data confirmed a different type of bike rack was needed at Pacific Beach Middle School to manage the secure storage of e-bikes during the school day.

After the pandemic lockdown was lifted and students were welcomed back to campus, there was an increase in the number of e-bikes arriving each day. Although the school had always provided traditional bike racks to accommodate cyclists from the neighborhood, their size made them insufficient to secure e-bikes and there was only rack space for a dozen of the e-bikes that were growing in popularity with Pacific Beach students.

Everett’s data showed as many as 60 to 70 traditional and e-bikes would arrive on campus a day.

On Nov. 1, 2022, according to her project, there were only 12 spots available for securing an e-bike. The remainder, frequently around 20, were chained and secured to a cluster of already locked e-bikes or left free standing, unsecured, during the school day.

As the 2022-23 school year progressed Everett’s data showed the number of e-bikes arriving on campus increased. For example, there were 52 bicycles on campus on Jan. 25, 2023, of which 30 were e-bikes.

The teen completed her project in April 2023 by making a presentation to the PBMS School Governance Committee and school administration. She said additional bike racks were needed to fit the longer and heavier e-bikes.

“While Kiley attended PBMS she did all the research regarding the best options for all bikes to be locked up securely for PBMS students,” Hensen said. “This was part of the inquiry and planning phase of her community service project. This research and data were forwarded to the district and approved for implementation.”