Smoke Signals 11
MARCH 15, 2008
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Community Fund grant gives elementary students the power to keep water from going down the drain
Editor's note: This is the third in a monthly series of stories in
2008 by Smoke Signals that will showcase the real-life effects of
Spirit Mountain Community Fund donations. Since its inception
in 1997, the Community Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Con
federated Tribes of Grand Ronde, has donated more than $40 mil
lion to groups in 11 western Oregon counties. These stories focus
on the good work those generous Tribal dollars do within nearby
communities and the effect they have on people and programs.
By Ron Karten
Smoke Signals staff writer
"Yes, we weeded," Ian Lortz, 11,
reminded his teacher about some
of the less appetizing aspects of
the work the class did in building
of a school stormwater diversion
project.
"There was a competition to see
who could pull out the largest root
system," said fifth-grade teacher
Lois Read.
One of three similar projects fund
ed in part by a $30,000 Spirit Moun
tain Community Fund grant in 2005,
today the project is about
three-quarters finished
on the 66th Street side of
Harvey Scott Elementary
School located at North
east Prescott in Portland.
"And we found a lot of
worms," Ian wanted his
fifth-grade teacher, Ms.
Read, to know.
Classmate Anna Rob
ertson, also 11, put it
a different way: "We
learned about inverte
brates," she said.
"A lot of us fell in the
mud," remembered Shay
la Singleton, 10.
"Elijah stepped on a
mudslide and went down,"
said Ian.
"What is it about the
dirt that makes it so slip
pery when it gets wet?"
Read asked.
Young eyebrows went
every which way as young
minds scanned their
knowledge about slippery
mud, and after a respect
able pause, Ian came up
with the idea that the clay content
in the dirt made it slippery, and
that was correct.
Which reminded Chris Hatha
way, director of Stewardship and
Technical Programs for the Lower
Columbia River Estuary Partner
ship that funded the project, that
"a light and puffy darker soil" was
not nearly so slippery.
And that was because it con
tained? The answer was organic
matter.
It was, apparently, a pretty big
mud bath because the kids worked
on this project throughout last year's
wet and wild fall and winter.
They are creating an area to take
in storm water from the school's roof
and, first, to allow the root systems
of trees, shrubs and grasses to help
purify that water; second, to keep
it out of the city's overloaded storm
sewers; and, finally, to serve as the
springboard for new learning.
The kids worked almost exclu
sively on rainy winter days, it
seemed to parents, and they had
to turn a weed- and tree-choked
lot into this nearly perfect piazza
for north Portland, complete with
recycled cement and sand, and
benches soon to come.
"My mom was excited until a lot
of mud got stuck on my shoes," said
Anna Robertson, though her mom,
Lisa, seemed just as happy, even
with the mud.
"It's great giving kids this op
portunity," she said. "I've learned
things, too." Then she reminded
Anna about one more thing that
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Photo courtesy of Harvey Scott Elementary School
Students at Harvey Scott Elementary School did a lot of gardening-type work to make their storm
water project come alive. Here, they are planting small trees and shrubs to help clean the water
coming off the school roof, and to save space in the city's stormwater system.
will come out of the project.
"I'm going to help my grandparents
dig up their garden," said Anna.
"It'll be like an outside class
room," said Michelle Mathis, pro
bono designer of the project from
the Portland-based landscape ar
chitecture, environmental design
team Greenworks PC.
She proposed all Native plants
that share the qualities of being
resistant to both the near drought
and extremely wet conditions that
often mark Oregon's weather.
The project also provides the city
public school system with some
financial savings. For 30 Portland
schools that currently have such
projects, the school district is sav
ing $50,000 a year for water not
pumped into the city's stormwater
sewers, according to Nancy Bond, a
Portland Public Schools Resources
Conservation specialist and project
manager for this project.
The school district also benefits,
said Bond, by "the opportunity to
partner with fabulous
nonprofits ... we're highly
visible, so we're modeling
good stewardship, and
there's a lot of commu
nity interaction."
"The whole thing is a
tremendous experience
for kids," Read said.
"A sign on the fence
told the whole story," Ha
thaway said. "It says a lot
that the sign remained
unvandalized for over 10
months."
The project "was really
abstract for the kids for a
long time," said Josh Hol
comb, an environmental
educator for the Lower
Columbia River Estu
ary Partnership. "When
we started (physically)
working, the connections
were made."
The school purchased
T-shirts naming the proj
ect for the students and
Read said, "They wear
the shirts and badges as
an honor." B
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Spirit Mountain Community Fund Director Shelley
Hanson, right, presented an $80,543 check to
Willamina School Board Chairman Bill Willis on
March 1 0. The grant will help the district improve
its technology for student learning by funding the
purchase of new computers, projectors and portable
computer labs. Tribal member Angela Fasana, middle,
serves as the Tribe's non-elected member on the
Willamina School Board.
Photo by louls King