Rosa Parks School

Green Schoolyard Achievements

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The Rosa Parks School community worked hard to plant, build, and maintain our school garden and yard in 2006 and 2007. The text and photographs below illustrate some of the things we have been working on and what we have achieved so far.

The Rosa Parks School community began a participatory schoolyard design process with parents and teachers in January 2006. Our overall goal is to enhance the existing schoolyard to create an even more vibrant and engaging environment for our children to work and play in.
In Fall 2006, we completed a concept plan that expresses our collective vision for the school grounds. The plan is intended to guide the future development of this environmental science school’s gardening program, outdoor classroom spaces, and play areas over the next 5-10 years. The concept plan includes design ideas that were generated by parents and teachers over the course of the planning process.

New Garden Fence, Covered Seating Area, & Barrel Planters

In April 2006, members of Berkeley’s Temple Beth El and ACE Hardware donated their time and money to help us improve our schoolyard! On the big work day, the volunteers helped Rosa Parks parents, teachers, and children build a new redwood fence to expand our vegetable garden (top left and middle show before and after), install and plant new wine barrel containers (top right), and weed and prune many plants in our yard.
The Berkeley Community Garden Collaborative also donated money to the school in April, and it was used to purchase supplies to build a redwood trellis-covered seating area for the
newly expanded garden (bottom middle and right). This new seating area has been getting daily use for our garden classes since it was built.
Polinator Garden

The non-profit Coevolution Institute donated a new pollinator garden to Rosa Parks School and sent Gregory Kellett to install the plants in our yard in May 2006. Gregory worked with several parents and students from many classes to prepare the ground and install the native plants. The garden is designed to attract pollinators of all types including butterflies, hummingbirds, native bees, and other useful and interesting creatures. Many of our teachers plan to connect this garden to their curricula.
Solar Grants

In October 2006, Rosa Parks School was awarded a grant worth $20,000 from PG&E’s Solar Schools Program! The grant will provide a 1.3 kilowatt solar generation system for our schoolyard (a large solar array on a tall pole, to be
installed Fall 2007) along with an educational website that will track its energy output. The grant also includes solar education curricula for our teachers.
Ms. Ingley, one of our talented science teachers, was also awarded a $5,000 grant to organize a large school-wide solar festival. In May 2007, each student in the school participated in this exciting event!

For more information please contact: Sharon Danks,