05/01/2006 Oak Haven School students pitch in for Earth Day cleanup By: Jessica Selby , Kent County Daily Times   Oak Haven School wasn't going to let Earth Day go by without doing its part to help out. Students, faculty, staff and parent volunteers spent all morning and well into the afternoon on Tuesday outdoors cleaning the property of yard waste and other debris. By day's end, the group had filled more than 225 brown yard waste bags that overflowed three 10-yard dumpsters. "The town was wonderful to work with," said Kathleen Miner, principal at Oak Haven School. "They kept coming back to pick up the Dumpster and empty it out for us so all those bags didn't have to stay at the school." "The day worked so efficiently," she said. "Between the wonderful PTA volunteers and the organized student schedule, this place looks really spiffy today." The students went out on a staggered schedule, Miner said. Each class was assigned a different time to go out and they had a particular area to tend to. The groups of students were guided through their task by a single PTA volunteer during their approximately one hour outside. "By doing it this way, it allowed each student to feel as though they did their part and it also gave the PTA the ability to structure the clean up," Miner said. "Everything was very efficient." The first grade students went out first. There were 45 in the group. Their task was to clean the circle in front of the school. "After all winter of the snow plow pushing leaves and whatever else up there, it looked horrible, but those kids did a wonderful job cleaning it up," Miner said. "They were all exhausted at the end of the day, but we were proud of the work that they did." The volunteers even cleaned the outside perimeter of the school around the fencing that runs along Princeton Avenue. "Last year, when we did this same clean up, we were not able to get as much done," said Michelle Lambert, a PTA volunteer and mother of Nicholas Lambert, a second grader at Oak Haven. "This year was different. Mrs. Miner had arranged it so that each group of kids had a scheduled time outside and an area to clean, so they all knew what they were supposed to do and it made it so much more organized." Between all of the volunteers and the kids that were out there, Lambert said she was amazed with what they were able to do. Unfortunately, however, they were still unable to get the job done. "Even after all we cleaned up today," said Al Richotte, a 71-year-old grandparent volunteer, "we are still going to have to come back on Friday to finish." In addition to the outside cleanup of their school, the students at Oak Haven also partnered with the Coventry Super Stop and Shop for an Earth Day project. The students were given plain brown paper bags and told to transform them into decorative ones that encourage environmentally-friendly behaviors. Some of the kids drew animals on their bags and reminded people that littering can hurt not only the environment but animals, too. Others drew pictures of the earth and some of natural landscapes. One student designed a paper bag with a number of sayings on it to remind people to recycle.