Mendon students clean up village

The collective effort of Mendon High School’s 42-member junior class has made the village’s downtown and riverside park a more attractive place.
The eleventh-grade students on Tuesday spent about five hours sweeping, weeding, washing windows and working on other odd tasks that, in the end, resulted in a spruced-up village.
Overseen by high school teachers Caleb Stephenson, Bill Trenary and Bobby Kretschman, the students had no objections being outdoors on a sunny day.
The annual downtown and riverside cleanup event has evolved into a long-standing tradition by the school’s junior class. It was originally started 25 years ago by Mendon-area resident and author Sarah Stewart.
Stephenson said the early days featured a collaboration with Mendon’s Friends of the Library group.
Stephenson, who teaches government and economics, said projects such as the downtown cleanup wouldn’t be possible in a larger school district because it would be too many students to manage.