Shelves half-filled with books lined the walls of the muggy Bailey APAC Middle School library, where a handful of volunteers assembled equipment, painted ceilings and sorted through boxes.

One volunteer, wiping sweat from his brow, was Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools.

Jackson Public Schools held its annual Beautification Day on Friday. The event brings community members into schools to help prepare them for the first day, just days away. Greene joined hundreds of volunteers across the city.

After all, he was the one who established the event when he arrived at the district in 2018 — a district that was facing a potential state takeover and had lost some trust from its community.

“There’s no way to revitalize a district and do the heavy lifting that we needed to do without some kind of spark,” he said. “We were looking for those sparks — painting a mural or planting some flowers or helping a teacher to set up a classroom. This was an effort to create some shared ownership in our schools.

“You want families to feel like this is their school, because it is.”

That shared responsibility is essential, especially as federal education funding wavers, Greene said. 

Voters had just approved a $65 million bond issue to pay for repairs and new classrooms in the district when Greene arrived in 2018. But he quickly realized Jackson Public Schools, which has many decades-old buildings, needed “two, three, maybe even four times more than that.”

“While I’m thankful, we’ve seen over time, the needs were just much, much, much greater,” he said. 

As the district focuses on taking its schools to the next level, Greene said, the state needs to continue consistently and fully funding education, and the community needs to keep supporting its schools at events like Beautification Day. 

Bailey in particular was humming with excitement on Friday morning. This year, students will be returning to the school’s original location where it was built in 1938. The school was closed for a few years while undergoing renovations, but in a few days, it will reopen as a 4th to 8th grade school after absorbing Wells APAC Elementary School.

For Rose Wright, a longtime history teacher at Bailey, it’s a homecoming.

“What I love about Beautification Day is that these are their children, and these parents are coming to help us help them,” she said, cutting decorations for her classroom. “I am just really excited to be at home.”

Outside in the sultry July heat, a group of dads dug up dead vines. Though it’s not his first time helping out during Beautification Day, Justin Cook, an attorney at the Mississippi Office of the State Public Defender, took off work this year to help prepare the school. He’s got two kids, a 5th grader and an 8th grader, who will learn in the new building.

“I thought it was important to do everything I could to make the transition easier,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be hiccups, and whatever we can do as parents and stakeholders to have that growing pains be as minimal as possible is essential.”

Events like Beautification Day, Greene said, don’t just deepen the relationship between the community and the district. They also show students that the community is invested in them, which is integral to their success. 

“I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and so I know what it means to be in a community that is kind of dismissed,” he said. “I’ve found that here, there’s a great deal of pride — even where we as a school district had not delivered. The fact that we even have this kind of activity absolutely signals to young people that people care about you.”

Students roamed the school grounds and hallways, stepping around wood planks and cardboard boxes, peering into their new classrooms.

Kayley Willis, who will be in the 5th grade at Bailey this year, saw her school for the first time on Friday morning and explored the building with friends Anasia Hunter and Farah Malembeka, both rising 6th graders. 

“It makes us feel proud that we actually have people who care about the school enough to come down here and help out,” Hunter said. “It really feels like they care.”