Volunteers Spruce Up Schools
2:20 AM, Aug. 22, 2011 | Written by Annie McCallum Bitter
Volunteers Jerry Morris, left, with Leadership Montgomery and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, and Corey Burton, also a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, help clean up the grounds at Lanier High School in Montgomery on Aug. 13./Mickey Welsh/Advertiser
Unkempt hedges, overgrown grass, littered sidewalks, faded and chipped paint -- that's how Montgomery Public Schools' approximately 60 school campuses might have looked for the first day of school today.
Instead, students will come back to pristine school grounds, thanks to what resembled an army of volunteers.
Approximately 1,000 people took part in the annual School Clean Up, which is organized by the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce. During the past two weeks, while students were soaking up the final days of summer, volunteers were out en masse trimming grass, painting buildings and picking up debris.
Still, Sharp, who is president of the Southlawn Community Organization and has lived in the area for almost 30 years, said the neighborhood takes pride in the school.
"The community makes the school, and the school makes the community," he said matter-of-factly.
Sharp and about a dozen volunteers, some from the area and others from Maxwell Air Force Base's First Sergeants Academy, turned out to spruce up the elementary school Aug. 13. They trimmed shrubs, put down pine straw and painted the curb with yellow paint.
"If a school looks good, (students) are going to take pride in it. Everybody -- the young students even the teachers and principal," he said.
Sharp said the community simply has to be involved with the school.
"If it wasn't for volunteers, it wouldn't look good and would take a long time to get it done," he said.
Superintendent Barbara Thompson conceded that without volunteers all the outdoor maintenance simply would not get completed.
"We don't have the personnel to do all of this," she said. "Our personnel has been cut so low."
She said she appreciates the widespread community support and knows it makes an impact when students head back to classes.
"Kids really look at things when they enter," she said, adding they are apt to notice a spruced-up school and realize "someone cares about them."
Thompson said school system officials are thankful for the community's help at the start of the school year, but she also wants to remind people that volunteers are needed throughout the year as well. Particularly this year when, Thompson said, the system will be attempting the ambitious goal of finding mentors for all of its at-risk students.The massive turnout for the annual cleanup took time to cultivate. This is the fourth year for the event, and organizers recalled the inaugural year where about 15 campuses were worked on by volunteers. For the past three years, all schools have been adopted by groups of volunteers.
Cameron Martindale, the chamber's senior vice president of community development, was among those to get the project started initially.
She recalled that then-superintendent John Dilworth said the system just didn't have the resources to clean and ready some schools.
Martindale said chamber officials volunteered to get their hands dirty and since then have coordinated the cleanup and also adopted a school to clean.
"We're not just walking the walk, we're talking the talk," she said. "The last four years the chamber has always done a school."
This year that school was Southlawn Middle School.
Martindale said it's amazing that the chamber can go to the business community and receive such a positive response even in the event's fourth year.
"It really means the world to us to know that the community cares about our public schools in the middle of the summer, on the hottest days, to go out. It is very difficult, dirty work," she said.
Keith Karst, who is the chairman of the chamber's education and workforce development council and Alabama Power Co. division manager of customer services, said the cleanup really is an example of how strong community partnerships can be.
He said Alabama Power has volunteered since the cleanup's inception and this year helped with five schools.
"Not only is it something good giving back, but also there's some intrinsic value, just the teamwork and working together," he said. "It was real team effort for the entire company."
Education, Karst said, is important to the community in terms of providing a workforce that meets the need of businesses, so whatever volunteers can do to help bolster education is valuable.
"I think any time when there's a first, the first day back at school, it's an opportunity to put on the best face we can to create some excitement, not only for teachers and the school system, but for the students and parents," Karst said. "When they come in they get that good positive feel that they're going to have a great year."
