Here at Kersley, we believe it is very important to take environmental action on various issues. In the case of waste management, we have a composting program as well as a recycling program. We also encourage garbage-free lunches. We promoted the program by making a commercial and presented it to the whole school. To remind students to keep bringing litterless lunches, we ran a competition to see which class had the least garbage.

We started our anti-idling campaign this year by writing letters to the Superintendent of schools, Manager of the school bus garage, and the Parent Advisory Council. We posted information about environmental impacts of idling in the school newsletter and we put up posters around the school. We also distributed information flyers to cars in the parking lot. We declared Kersley a no idling zone by posting a sign in the school parking lot. As a result of our campaign, our Mayor wrote us a letter to let us know that the City made a policy that their vehicles will limit the amount of idling. The School District Superintendent has assured us that the School District vehicles will also limit their idling.

Other initiatives that we took on this year included planting 94 pine seedlings on the school grounds, as well as challenging all of the families with students at our school to take on the Kersley Elementary Environmental Challenge. As part of this challenge, they were asked to do at least one thing to reduce their environmental impact. We designed Environmental T-shirts this year and were Environmental Ambassadors to other schools. All together we think that we did a terrific job implementing all of these environmentally-friendly projects and can´t wait until next year to be able to think up more!

Christine Clark