In the News

Teachers and Students Complete Schoolyard Restoration Project
date posted: December 22 2005

Lake Tahoe Report #90
Oct. 26, 2004
By John Cobourn and Heather Segale

Teachers and students from Tahoe Lake Elementary School in Tahoe City completed an environmental restoration project on their campus this September. Working through the summer, volunteers removed over 1,100 square feet of asphalt and installed irrigated planter boxes outside classroom windows. They also created a drainage swale to carry water from roof downspouts to a newly excavated storm-water infiltration basin.

Beginning last spring, members of the Sierra Watershed Education Partnerships, the Tahoe Resource Conservation District and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service helped teachers and students design and implement this project. The project was designed to provide an educational experience for the students and contribute to their local environment, making it a “place-based service learning project.”

Toni Rockwell’s and Heidi Bushway’s students mapped the schoolyard in the spring, and selected a site where roof runoff could be infiltrated into the ground instead of flowing through an urban storm drain to the lake. Students learned that by removing pavement and storing runoff in a basin, they could restore the natural watershed function of allowing precipitation to soak into the ground. Students planted and mulched native vegetation in the planter boxes and the basin after returning to school this fall. These types of water quality protection efforts are commonly known as best management practices (BMPs), and they are required on every developed property, public and private, in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Students not only learned mapping and planting skills, but they also wrote about their project and what they learned, and made formal presentations to other classes and community groups. Once the first winter storms hit in mid-October, the students learned how to monitor the effectiveness of the project. They learned how to sample and test water quality, and record the data. They also measured and tracked the percolation rate of the water captured in the infiltration basin. Next spring, they will assess the winter survival rate of the plants, and learn to care for the vegetation in the planter boxes and the basin.

Research shows that such projects create excitement and motivation for learning, and that students engaged in them have fewer discipline problems and score higher on standardized tests in subjects such as language arts, reading, math and science. One student from the school stated, “I think it was fun teaching grown-ups and other kids about our project. It was fun doing a demonstration for people to help them learn about erosion.” This BMP project was constructed, in part, to serve as a model for landowners and other Tahoe schools.

The involvement of partners in the local community is one of the remarkable aspects of this kind of service learning project. Natural resource professionals and local businesses provided advice and resources. A grant from the Sierra Nevada Alliance and generous donations from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Parent-Teacher Organization of Tahoe Lake School, and Tahoe Agua Pura provided the majority of the funds for materials and construction. Jan Ellis, of SWEP, worked closely with Scott Cecchi of the TRCD to coordinate with many donors and contractors to get the project built. They received solid support from Danny Hyde, the principal at Tahoe Lake School. Scott worked with Rob Basile to design the engineered portions of the project, and Brendan Ferry and Birgit Widegren of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) assisted with refinements to gain approval for the BMP Retrofit application. Prior to and during construction, these people met with Chris Cooper, the Maintenance Supervisor for the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District and Dan LaPlante of Placer County to iron out liability and maintenance details on the site. Others who contributed to the project include Rock Garden Nursery in Truckee, Robert Sutton Paving, Teichert Aggregates, Brent Bradley, and Julie Upton.