Teen pushing for sidewalks to improve student safety

Students in Saint Cloud are making the streets safer for kids to walk to school and tackling the task themselves. 

One high school senior says she’s this road without a sidewalk for years, and now her sisters are walking it too. She wants them and the hundreds of other students who use the street to be safe.  You might call her a high school senior with a vision.

“There's no sidewalks and I said we should do something about this. Kids are walking here everyday.”

She has a vision for streets near Saint Cloud High and Middle Schools and Michigan Avenue Elementary School to be lined with sidewalks. It’s not a lot to ask.
“Maybe 100 to 200 kids. There's a lot of kids between all the schools walking on this street.”
But to install sidewalks along 17th Street from Vermont to Michigan Avenue is easier said than done.
“I want to do it the right way not the wrong way. The city doesn't have the money for it.”
That means the money has to come from grants. Not to mention, some of this property may not even be the city’s. It likely belongs to these homeowners, which means they’d have to sign off on it too. Just to solicit their signatures costs money. 
But this Saint Cloud senior already has more than 30 signatures on her petition and received the support of the school board at Tuesday night’s meeting. Oh, and did we mention her name? Charity. 
“After last night I feel a lot more confident. I feel like this would go forward.”
Her last name is Best. It’s a name too fitting for a girl doing her best for those other than herself.
“They've been talking about this problem for years but nobody's done anything about it and I thought something should be done about it.” 
Best is working to get more signatures on the petition so she can present it to city council next month.