If you have driven around a school campus in Selma lately, it’s likely you’ve noticed the change.

If you haven’t, then take a few minutes to drive by and see the way the campuses have cleaned up.

The Selma Times-Journal has opined before about how clean schools and pretty campuses affect students’ ability to learn and teachers’ instruction. That’s not the purpose of this essay.

If you have read anything about school budgets lately — school budgets anywhere in the United States — you know schools and states hurt for money to educate children. Here in Selma there is no difference.

A couple of weeks ago, the Selma City School Board gave interim Superintendent Don Jefferson the OK to hire some temporary workers to help with campus cleanups and to paint the insides.

More meaningful to the community would be a volunteer effort on the part of those who live around the schools, whose children attend those schools. Volunteering doesn’t take long. You go to the school. You ask for a task and complete it. Job done.

But being there and contributing in sweat equity builds community and pride.

That’s priceless.