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Class Action: Kids Get Station Lights Fixed

 By SUZY KENLY

Hundreds of commuters and community residents use the Bedford Park D-train station every day. Yet it was a bunch of 8- and 9-year-olds who noticed a problem there and banded together to get it fixed.

During a class outing, Quinisha Kelly, a student at the Bronx New School in Bedford Park, was walking with her teacher, Sasha Wilson, and the rest of her class, when she noticed that the station's underpass entrance on Bedford Park Boulevard was very dark.

Wilson said that Kelly was the one who first discovered the station was in need of more lighting as she glanced up at the light bulbs that were no longer working.

Wilson had been looking for a neighborhood project for his class to take on, so that they could learn the joys and challenges of civic action.

Wilson took note of the problem at the underpass and back in class, the kids voted on which project the class would partake in: cleaning up litter in the area, or getting the underpass lights fixed.

"We chose the lights because people get injured by tripping and falling," said Frankelly Santiago, 8.

After the class wrote a letter to Connie Moran, commissioner of the Bronx Department of Transportation (DOT), and sent her pictures of the neglected station, the students waited patiently for an answer. Meanwhile, they wrote poems about the lack of light at the Bedford Park station, and wrote a play about all of the people who would be involved in fixing up the area.

The play, called "Darkness and Danger," was performed on June 13 for the children's parents, and it gave the students a chance to act out the different roles of people in the community. By the time the curtains went up on the play, the underpass lights still had not been fixed, although Wilson had been in close contact with a person at the DOT who was enthusiastic about the project and promised to fix the lighting.

"We had to end the play on a happy note, even though the lights had not been fixed yet," Wilson said. "And so, we said at the end, that although the lights were not fixed, we managed to get everyone involved in cleaning up the neighborhood."

Three days later, the kids would see just how much impact they had had. Wilson took his class out on another field trip, walking to the underpass they wanted to bring light to. The kids in front of the line started screaming and yelling with happiness, leaving the kids at the back of the line standing on their tiptoes, and hollering, "What happened?"

What happened was the lights had been fixed, thanks to a group of kids who saw a problem and decided to take action.