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Berkeley Prep Students Pitch In at Al Lopez Park

KATHY MOORE/STAFF

More than 150 freshman students from Berkeley Preparatory School earn community service credits throughout the Tampa Bay area. A group of about 20 spent Wednesday morning edging and planting sod at Al Lopez Park.

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 7, 2009

TAMPA - Colleen Cambier and Samantha Franz started their day working the sod assembly line before moving into ditch work.

The girls, freshmen at Berkeley Preparatory School, took turns this morning crouching in a shallow ditch with strips of edging and pounding stakes into it. Samantha, 14, said they hadn't done landscaping work like this before but soon learned it was easier if they worked in pairs.

Behind them, about 20 Berkeley ninth-graders unloaded squares of sod from a truck, passed them down a line and fit them together on the ground.

"It's kind of dirty," said 15-year-old George Ordiway. But he expected a little dust and dirt.

Within an hour at Al Lopez Park, students had completed the sod and most of the edging and headed out along a paved path to pick up trash.

The park group was among more than 150 students from the northwestern Hillsborough private school who volunteered across the community today. Teens also went to St. Joseph's Children's Hospital, America's Second Harvest and Hudson Manor, an assisted-living facility.

They call today "Flip Day" because, while the ninth-graders volunteered, eighth-graders took their places at school as temporary freshmen. The younger students take 30-minute classes with the high school teachers, doing lessons or activities, to help the students feel more secure about leaving middle school next year, said high school math teacher Mike Van Treese

All Berkeley students, from prekindergarten through high school seniors, participate in community service projects each year. By the time students join the upper school, they are expected to earn 21 service hours a year.

Colleen, 15, gets most of her hours by spending Saturdays at Mease Countryside Hospital, discharging patients and getting charts for nurses. Samantha has volunteered at Metropolitan Ministries. George helps at his church and participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

Debby Young, a senior parks operation specialist with the city, said the students' work would improve Al Lopez Park. Without the edging, chunky mulch would wash over the park's path when it rains. The newly sodded area had also been mulched, but that mulch didn't stay put in downpours. Instead, it clogged a drain and flooded the path.

Al Lopez coordinated with the Mayor's Beautification Program to bring in the Berkeley volunteers. The nonprofit program offers environmental service opportunities through volunteering for specific projects or "adoptions" of medians, neighborhoods, parks and shorelines, where groups make longer commitments to an area.

Berkeley has been a good partner, according to Debbie Evenson, the executive director of the Mayor's Beautification Program.

In seven years, students have volunteered 4,320 hours with the Mayor's Beautification Program, she said. If time were money, she said, their efforts would be worth about $82,000.

"That's a huge number," Evenson said.

Helping out at parks also gives students a stake in their upkeep.

"They come back to the park, and you hear kids say, 'I planted that,' or 'Don't throw that down – I have to pick it up,'" she said.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503.

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