What began as a fifth-grade assignment to solve a real-world problem eventually led to a new protected crosswalk on North Cooper Street outside the school.<\/p>\n
ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 Students at Webb Elementary in Arlington are seeing the results of a class project they started three years ago now helping make their walk to school safer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What began as a fifth-grade assignment to solve a real-world problem eventually led to a new protected crosswalk on North Cooper Street outside the school.<\/p>\n
Now, eighth graders Jesus Garza and Alonzo Salinas said they first noticed how dangerous the busy roadway could be for children and families trying to cross the street near campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust crossing the street with their parents or with their siblings, and they’re they might get hurt,\u201d Alonzo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people were speeding, and a lot of kids were getting hurt because of the speeding, crossing Cooper Street down to their home from Webb,\u201d Jesus said.<\/p>\n
Former teacher Kathy Kaju said the project was designed to encourage students to think beyond the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s the bridges project, and so I just wanted them to have a real-world application,\u201d Kaju said.<\/p>\n
The students eventually created a prototype for a pedestrian bridge and presented their idea to Arlington Mayor Jim Ross.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that they came to us and said, we need to make an environment safer for kids really got us going,\u201d Mayor Jim Ross said.<\/p>\n
Ross said city leaders explored the students\u2019 idea, but the cost of building a pedestrian bridge was too expensive. But the mayor explained that they didn’t put the brakes on them wanting to do something about the students’ safety concerns. After planning and studying what could be done, an alternative was eventually worked out. Instead, the city installed a protected crosswalk near the school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you see now is a protected crosswalk here for the children. Something very needed here at Webb Elementary,\u201d Ross said.<\/p>\n
While the original pedestrian bridge proposal was never built, the students said they are proud that their project still created a change that will help future students safely cross Cooper Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes me feel happy and proud that we were able to accomplish such a big achievement,\u201d Jesus said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What began as a fifth-grade assignment to solve a real-world problem eventually led to a new protected crosswalk…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":800380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-800379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116583849463715278","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}