Shakopee middle school custodian, a former student, transforms building with hand-painted murals
What started as a simple idea inside a Twin Cities middle school is slowly transforming the space, and it's catching students by surprise along the way.
At Shakopee East Middle School, the sound of the bell still signals the end of one class and the start of another. For head custodian Mackenzie Reed, she's heard it before as a student here in the mid-2000s.
"I just remember it being very tan, very dull and cramped," Reed said.
Years later, she came back as the person responsible for caring for the school.
"Still just the same old tan walls [laughs]," Reed said.
So she picked up a paintbrush.
"It started off with the pillars and numbering the pillars for the students," she said.
What began during COVID as a small project has grown into something much bigger.
"Give me a bare wall, and I'm gonna paint it," she said.
The former student volunteered to reshape the place she once knew with hand-sketched, large-scale murals in hallways, under the stair nooks and in the lunchroom.
"I feel like these kids need some type of pride for their building that they come into," she said.
Students who've witnessed the transformation say they feel it.
"The building before was a bit bland, but now it's just more colorful," said eighth-grader Sawyer Tagg.
"Throughout the years, with all like the paintings, it just became more warm and welcoming," said eighth-grader Asiah Meregildo-Worley.
Principal Clayton Ellis says that matters.
"You want to feel welcomed, right? You want to feel heard, you want to feel seen, all of those things," Ellis said. "But if you feel centered as a student, as a human being, right, and you have that sense of belonging, then everything else will start to fall in place."
Each mural is more than paint — it's personal. But Reed doesn't sign her work. In fact, she's OK if students don't even know it's hers.
"It's just pride," Reed said. "It's like, I did that. I don't tell them that because I just like them to enjoy it."
Reed is also taking her talents to other Shakopee schools. She'll be starting a mural project at Eagle Creek Elementary School during spring break.
