BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — The low income neighborhood around Munsey Elementary School just received an upgrade to two walkways that lead to the school.
- Video shows upgrades to two new walkways leding to Munsey Elementary School
- According to data from the Bakersfield City School District, 92.3% of students at Munsey Elementary School reported socioeconomic disadvantages.
- Kern County Public Works removed asphalt, cleared trees, and constructed about 200 feet of cement for each path and left behind two grateful students.
This newly renovated walkway leads students Munsey Elementary School right behind me, and students say before these changes they didn’t feel safe walking to school.
“It was like a lot of homeless people and stuff," Maliyah Rufus, a sixth grader at Munsey Elementary School said.
“Yea, and it was creepy,” Marsean Hall, another sixth grader, adds.
Rufus and Hall say they walked on these alleyways to school since they were in kindergarten.
They tell me each day in the alley brought uncertainty.
“You don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Hall said.
Lisa Smith, a neighborhood advocate and teacher at Fairfax Junior High shows these pictures of the path, saying it housed homeless people, dumped trash and flooding during the rainy season.
“It just wasn’t a place that I could imagine a 5 year old kindergartner walking through, and it was dangerous,” Smith said.
According to data from the Bakersfield City School District, 92.3% of students at Munsey Elementary School reported socioeconomic disadvantages.
Smith tells me she decided to stand up for these students.
“This may seem like a small project to some, but to our school community it’s a big project," Sarah Riess, the principal of Munsey Elementary School said.
Datafrom Neighborhood Scout, a platform that provides hyper-local real estate information shows this neighborhood as a lower-middle income area with a higher rate of child poverty than 91.5% of U.S neighborhoods.
“We want them to see the visible difference that the community cares about them, their safety, their well-being and their education,” Kern County district three supervisor Jeff Flores said.
Funding for the projects came from the Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account, costing $54,971 for the west walkway and $49,163 for the east walkway.
The county and the school celebrated the completion of the project on Monday.
“Oh my gosh, it’s so amazing!" Smith laughes. "It’s so beautiful to see them clean and safe.”
Kern County Public Works removed asphalt, cleared trees, and constructed about 200 feet of cement for each path and left behind two grateful students.
“I thank the people that did it," Hall said.
“I thank the people that did it," Rufus added. "I’m grateful that they had the opportunity to fix our school up.”
Smith tells me while the school year is ending, the renovations have created a safe path for students headed to summer school and added an overall improvement to the neighborhood.
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