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Positive impact planned
PROJECT IMPACT
Cleanup day
Village residents who want to continue the Project Impact Day effort can join in with the “Great American Cleanup,” which will be Saturday, weather permitting.
Workers should meet at 9 a.m. at the Ramsey Pavilion in Woodland Park.
Donations for Project Impact have been made this year to help students pay for flowers and mulch by Douglas Family Eyecare, Howland, and the Gallo family through McDonald Steel and Alloy Specialists Inc.
Source: McDonald schools
By MARY SMITH
McDONALD
McDonald High School students and teachers will leave behind the classroom for a morning this week and spend it in the village sprucing, cleaning, primping and planting at the school and village locations.
The students will be carrying on the tradition of Positive Impact Day at the school, which has taken place for at least the last four years, said schools Superintendent Michael Wasser.
About 400 students, in groups of 15 with a teacher, will be set to participate the morning of the cleanup. Weather permitting, they will begin Wednesday. The rain date tentatively is set for Friday.
Students and teachers will join in cleaning up, laying new mulch and planting new flowers at the high school and Roosevelt Elementary School.
Work also will include cleaning up and planting at Woodland Park and around four new basketball courts and two new tennis courts installed across from Village Hall last year.
The War Memorial and the Ramsey Pavilion also will be spruced up. Marshall Road and Second Street will be targeted for trash pickup, Wasser said.
Chris Rupe, high school science teacher who is coordinating the day, said students in his ecology class did the advance work to organize for the annual cleanup day.
The work plans each year are coordinated through village Administrator Tom Domitrovich, who gathers ideas he has from residents about things they would like to see done around McDonald. He then gives them to the students.
Work done on village properties includes picking up sticks and replanting and mulching flower beds.
Students bring their own shovels, rakes and other tools on Positive Impact Day.
Village crews work to help the students, and they come around and pick up big piles of sticks and debris. They also bring mulch to locations where students are working.
“I think it is absolutely a tremendous thing. It’s showing our kids [that] giving back sometimes makes them really feel good about themselves and that they are special,” Wasser said.
Students from grades seven to 12 and teachers and administrators all join in, if they wish. The only staff left at their desks are the school nurse and the office staff at the high school and in the superintendent’s office to man the phones.
Students return to school for lunch.
Positive Impact Day is a way for students, staff and administration to show their appreciation and love for the village, Rupe said. Gary Carkido, high school principal, and Wasser will oversee the event.