Features

Juniors Erika Green and Krista Nguyen help weed around the plants at Edmonds-Woodway on the NHS’s Campus Cleanup Day.

By Sara Bruestle
The Beacon

It was raining on Saturday, but volunteers still showed up at 9 a.m. to don gardening gloves, shovels and rakes at Edmonds-Woodway High School.

About 55 students, four parents and one teacher volunteered to pick up trash, weed and mulch at Edmonds-Woodway for Campus Cleanup Day on Apr. 17.

The day, sponsored by the Edmonds-Woodway National Honor Society, is an effort to help the grounds-keeping staff beautify the campus, especially the North and South entries of the school.

“Part of what the National Honor Society kids do is seek ways to give back, whether to the community or to the school,” said Assistant Principal Geoff Bennett. “The budget is stretched so thin, that they figured it would be a really neat thing to do for our school.”

Bennett, who helped organize the cleanup, plans to turn the NHS’s annual Campus Cleanup Day into a biannual effort in the fall and spring, starting this year.

He wasn’t expecting any more than 30-40 NHS students to show up on Saturday, so when almost double arrived ready to help, he was pleasantly surprised.

“Even without favorable weather conditions, we [had] good attendance,” said senior Raymond Yap, NHS vice president.  “Nobody really wants to work when it’s raining.  I think everybody [did] great helping out.”

Yap trimmed the overgrowth of grass and weeds from the edges of the school’s sidewalks on Saturday.

The NHS borrowed the Edmonds School District’s utility vehicle and trailer to cart garbage cans full of mulch, trash and yard waste back and forth.

In just two hours, volunteers had filled one of the school’s dumpsters.

Junior Erika Green, an NHS student, helped pick weeds and distribute mulch around the campus.  She said it feels good to beautify the campus in a group effort.

“I wanted to make our school pretty,” she said. “If you don’t have pride in your school, there’s no reason to get involved.”

Edmonds-Woodway students in the school’s NHS are required to do five hours of service on campus or in the community a year. Students wishing to be initiated into the NHS need two hours of service.

Junior Jack Chelgren, an NHS student, helped weed and pick up trash.  He said he found a lot of Starbucks cups and Burger King wrappers littered around campus.

“I’m doing it (volunteering) for the hours, but I like gardening too,” he said.  “It’s calming. I spend so much time [doing homework]; it’s nice to be outside just sort of doing something mindless.”

Haley Millet, a junior and NHS student, helped clean out flower beds and scrap moss off of the sidewalks at Edmonds-Woodway.  She said she hopes volunteering for Campus Cleanup Day will inspire students to make a difference inside and outside school.

“I feel like the school is where people spend the majority of their time, and so we might as well give back to it” she said. “If you just give a few hours of your time, then I think it really shows.”

The mulch was donated to Edmonds-Woodway by T.E. Briggs Construction Co. in Edmonds.

The NHS is also buying flowers to plant along the edge of campus in school colors – purple, green, gold and white – from the local Fred Meyer and Home Depot with funds from NHS fundraisers.

“We want to brighten the place up a bit with some light planting of colorful flowers,” said NHS adviser David Quinn.  “But we have to be careful about the flowers we choose because the crows like to rip the heads off of our flowers, which means more cleaning.”

The next Campus Cleanup Day is scheduled from 9-2 p.m. on Saturday, Apr. 24 to plant the flowers.  NHS members and others from the Edmonds-Woodway community are invited to volunteer or donate a flat of flowers.

For more information about Campus Cleanup Day contact Geoff Bennett at 425-431-7902 or bennettg@edmonds.wednet.edu.