Vision

Our school is undergoing a huge outdoor space improvement. Many of our students and teachers are enjoying the benefits of learning outside. We noticed lots of litter on our school grounds and a lack of trees. Therefore, our Green Team Student committee devised a plan to purchase reusable cleaning equipment for all students to take turns using with our $500 LSF grant. We the remainder of the money from that grant, our Green Team decided to put it toward the purchase of maple trees for our outdoor space.

Action

With our $500, we funded 2 projects.

1) We purchased equipment to help with weekly garbage pickup around our school and community. Each week, 3 classes in our school are responsible for recycling sorting, collecting redeemables, and garbage pickup in the school yard and community. To decrease our garbage, we have purchased reusable buckets and metal tongs to cut down on garbage bags and gloves. This has been an amazing project to get the entire school involved in keeping our school clean and recycling organized. ($58.00)

2) Our second project is part of a bigger one! Our school is planning a huge outdoor space renovation. Among many improvements and changes, one is to plant more trees on our campus. The remainder of the money from our $500 grant went to purchasing trees from our local greenhouse. (We purchased four trees at $250 each. We contributed $442 toward that purchase).

Reflection & Celebration

We have noticed an improvement with the problem of litter immediately! It was so encouraging that the hard work that the students do to keep their school space clean has had the effect of less students littering in the first place. Moreover, we have noticed that the use of our redeemable bins has improved, as we are finding fewer cans and juice boxes in the waste bin and more in the redeemables bin.
Not only have we been keeping our school space clean, we have expanded to clean trash in our community park and local coastal area (St. Croix River).

We have many other plans for our outdoor space, but this has been a great start to making it beautiful and enjoyed by all students.

In the coming month, we look forward to planting our trees with the whole school looking and being involved.