Athletes, teachers, friends and other volunteers rolled up their sleeves and spent July 29 on an energetic adventure to give Baker High School a much needed facelift.

The work included exterior and interior painting, trimming trees and bushes, repainting parking space lines and pressure washing.

In the home team’s locker room under the football stadium volunteers scraped peeling paint off the ceiling, swept floors and lockers, and rolled on fresh paint overhead.

Dynasty Williams watched as Darius Nefl, Treylon Anderson and Frederick Parker cleaned up one corner of the locker room. She placed third in the two-mile run at the last state track meet.

Elsewhere a worker was on the roof in front of the main building uprooting grass and weeds growing tall in the roof’s gutters.

Mayor Harold Rideau, Interim School Superintendent Ulysses Joseph, Head Football Coach Robert Raines and Athletic Director Gary Mitchell were among those working, assisting and directing the work.

Little seems to have been done in maintaining the school buildings since Baker became an independent school district in 2003, but that’s changing now.

More clean-up days are expected in the future for BHS as alumni are notifying Principal Traci Morgan they want to join the effort to make BHS beautiful.

Free food and cold drinks were provided to all the workers.