COLINA STUDENTS PAY FOR QUAD.Byline: Cecilia Chan Daily News Staff Writer Students at Colina Middle School Colina Middle School is a public school located in Thousands Oaks, California, United States, part of the Conejo Valley Unified School District. The motto is "Work Hard, Make Friends, and Have Fun." The school mascot is the Colina Cougar. sold magazine subscriptions for four years before they raised enough money to build an outdoor quad for the campus. What was once a dirt patch is now a student gathering place, 50 feet by 400 feet, complete with landscaping and curved walls for sitting. Work crews this week added the finishing touches finishing touches finish npl the finishing touches → der letzte Schliff finishing touches npl → ultimi ritocchi mpl in anticipation of Monday's ribbon-cutting ceremony. ``With the limited funds that are available to school districts, it's hard to get this type of beautification beau·ti·fy tr. & intr.v. beau·ti·fied, beau·ti·fy·ing, beau·ti·fies To make or become beautiful. beau project,'' Assistant Principal Margaret Callahan said. ``Up until the bond passed (last) year, there were not enough dollars to go around.'' Students originally planned to raise the money for 10 years to build a gymnasium gymnasium In Germany, a state-maintained secondary school that prepares pupils for higher academic education. This type of nine-year school originated in Strasbourg in 1537. , but an $88 million statewide school improvement bond that passed last year took care of that. So students took a vote and decided to use the $50,000 raised so far to develop a quad. ``I really like it,'' said Bryan Medders, student body president. ``It's a lot easier place to be and hang out with friends and stuff.'' Before, ``whenever it rained, it was muddy,'' the 14-year-old said. ``Now it looks really cool.'' Parent volunteer Marna Bilger also liked having the quad. ``The school functioned without it,'' she said. ``But (the quad) provides a completely new eating area during breaks in school.'' The students worked with landscape architect Michele Newman Michele Newman is an English television presenter. She began her presenting career on the regional BBC news programme Look East, and followed this with a move to Central News. , who donated her time and design for the project after she learned the students were building the quad with money they raised, Callahan said. ``There is a beautiful oak tree out there and a pear pear, name for a fruit tree of the genus Pyrus of the family Rosaceae (rose family) and for its fruit, a pome. The common pear (P. communis) is one of the earliest cultivated of fruit trees, both in its native W Asia and in Europe. tree, and they wanted to keep those trees so they put in seat walls,'' she said. ``They wanted a place that incorporated plants and still give room for kids.'' Callahan said the school has a special projects account that students' fund-raising fund-raising, large-scale soliciting of voluntary contributions, especially in the United States. Fund-raising is widely undertaken by charitable organizations, educational institutions, and political groups to acquire sufficient funds to support their activities. dollars go into to help improve the 30-year-old campus. Having labored so long raising the money, students worked to protect their investment. ``I know that for the past couple of days they have been pouring cement; six to seven students were guarding it so no one could write their name in it,'' Medders said. ``Out of 900 kids, only two people tried to do it.'' |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion