BETHEL – Come this fall, children heading to school in Bethel Village should have new sidewalks to walk on from Broad and Mason streets to SAD 44’s Crescent Park School.

Of the $128,000 project cost, the town will provide an in-kind match of $32,000 to accompany a federal grant of $96,460 through the Maine Department of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School program, Town Manager Scott Cole said Wednesday.

“It’s exciting,” SAD 44 Superintendent David Murphy said Thursday morning. “Scott and I were talking about it years ago, back when I was principal. It will give kids better and safer access to school.”

Due to safety concerns, the district doesn’t allow children to walk to school along the roadsides. Either parents drive them to and from school or they ride buses.

Work is not expected to start on the long-awaited project to construct a third of a mile of sidewalk until August or soon after, Cole said.

“It’s a good project for the town, but the benefit goes beyond elementary school students, because it will provide safe pedestrian access,” he said. “In the last 10 years, the town has improved its sidewalks and this is another step in that direction, no pun intended.”

Cole and Murphy both lauded the community effort behind the grant, the application for which was prepared by Bethel Area Trails, a subcommittee of the Mahoosuc Land Trust. The grant was submitted last August and organizers had expected to learn if they got it by February. That word, however, didn’t come until Monday, via an e-mail from MDOT.