CLOVIS, Calif. — The Walmart Foundation is donating a $8,500 grant to Clovis Unified School District (USD) that will allow students at one of the district’s high schools and its intermediate school to continue riding school buses each day for the remainder of the school year.

Kelly Avants, school district spokeswoman, told The Fresno Bee that the donation marks the first time the district has received funding from a private, non school-affiliated organization to help pay for bus service.

Without the funding, the students who attend those schools who live less than two miles from them would have been required to walk to and from the schools and cross a busy street.

Clovis USD instituted a policy in 2003 that requires families of junior high and high school students living within two miles of their schools to pay for bus service. This year, the families raised about half of what was needed.

The Fresno Bee reports that in previous years, the district has been able to get money from school-affiliated foundations to pay for community busing, but the foundations could not spare money for the program this year.

In a prepared statement, Mike Buchta, Walmart's north Fresno store manager, said the company and its foundation contributed to the program because it's "important to customers and associates in their own neighborhoods."