Attempting to raise environmental awareness in the community, a group of students and some adult mentors took first place at the first annual Green Schools Quest.

The Green Schools Quest is a challenge issued by the U.S. Green Building Council to public and private schools within the region to implement the most creative, effective, and low to no cost sustainable practices for their schools. Building off of her composting project that went into effect around the school at the beginning of the year, senior Julia Goldman and the rest of the students involved wanted to continue their work.

“We decided to start a garden to bring the community together and recycle,” Goldman said. “Now that we have the composting, people want to know what it all means. The garden shows the connection between it all.”

In addition to sending food to the compost, the group composted the product into soil which they could then use in the garden. This soil is a 50-50 compost mix from St. Louis composting, according to Goldman.
That was not all, though. The students had to put in some extra work in order to accomplish their goal.

“Overall, we spent a lot of hours on this project,” Goldman said. “We met after school for two hours a week. It was a lot of time.”

In those two hour periods after school, there was a lot that needed to be accomplished. The students would split up jobs among themselves. For example, they had to decide what garden they wanted from a raised or ground bed to the space between them. They also needed to figure out the size of the garden and what was going to be planted there. They decided on planting items such as broccoli and lettuce.

The students accepted aid from adults both inside and out of the building to help things run smoothly. One of those helpers was Parkway’s Sustainability and Purchasing Manger Mr. Erik Leuders. He starts most of the green initiatives in the district but in this case, he was focused specifically on Central.

“I helped try to guide their process,” Leuders said. “They seemed interested in the composting program, raising more awareness about it, and closing the loop. So, I helped to plug them into outside resources.”
Outside resources such as sourcing the concrete blocks used to build the beds for a cheaper price or getting the soil for free from St. Louis composting.

Another source of adult support came from science teacher Mrs. Beth Karfs.

“I basically provided a meeting place and meeting time,” Karfs said. “I tried to help get some of the supplies from within the building like the environmental chamber and seeds from the biology teachers. Mr. Leuders was on the district level but I was more at the school level.”

While the students appreciate the help from both Leuders and Karfs, the mentors are equally appreciative of the experience.

“The opportunity to work with students is why we are here,” Leuders said. “That’s what we are doing it for; to create that opportunity for them.”

Along with first place and helping the community, the sweetest prize of all might be the future of the Green Schools Quest at Central.

“We absolutely plan on doing this next year. We would like to grow the group,” Karfs said. “With the environmental group, what we have gotten started here, and the funds we are going to receive from our award, we will be able to maybe have a garden committee that is going to be specific to just this group.”

The students accepted their award at the seventh annual Green Schools Event on April 29.