Sant Bani School Hits the Roads

Twenty-five miles of Sanbornton roads received special attention last Friday, Earth Day 2011. 210 students, teachers and parents from the Sant Bani School carefully inspected 18 different roads and collected two pickup truck loads of trash. Sanbornton’s Transfer Station extended the day to receive mounds of aluminum cans along with thousands of cigarette butts, hubcaps, rusted buckets, broken toys, wrappings, bottles, shoes, broken glass, tires and more. The nineteen mixed-age groups moved in carefully synchronized routes to collect the debris that the snow banks had been hiding all winter. It took just over two hours for the swarm of children and adults to make Sanbornton’s roads even more scenic.

Roadside clean up was just part of the Sant Bani’s Earth Day celebration. The day began with a presentation by Principal Kent Bicknell who had recently returned from The Kingdom of Bhutan. He video-interviewed the head of a school half a world away about how sixth grade students chose to tackle the problem of trash on their campus and solved it by assigning themselves theme days which limited packaged food to one day a week. She explained that by raising awareness the students worked from within their school to eliminate a long-standing problem.

Other Earth Day projects included landscaping in front of the new front entrance way and planting flowers at the intersection of Prescott and New Hampton Roads. Todd Schongalla, a former County Extension Agent and current Sant Bani teacher and service coordinator, and his environmental studies class working with professional landscaper and Sant Bani parent Jonathan Marchant. They planted shrubbery in a difficult area on the north side on the building in ground that had recently been a construction site. The results were rewarding. Also gratifying was the improvement of a tiny traffic island, made more beautiful by a team who planted dozens of pansies donated by Hillside Meadow Agway in Tilton.

The Earth Day was planned by a teacher committee which worked with town officials to assure the safety of all. Nothing was neglected during this richly worthwhile day. As the big buses pulled out at 3:30 p.m. students had the pleasure of driving down town roads and feeling that they each played a part keeping the earth a little cleaner.