The school is partnering with Tree-plenish, which started at Mansfield High School. Here Mansfield students Peter Oldow, Will Giffen, and Cam Eddy are ready to plant last year.
LENOX, Mass. — Lenox Memorial High School students want to plant 100 trees as a way to replace one million sheets of paper.
And they're looking for help from the community to purchase the saplings and plant them on April 24.
"Basically we're trying to offset our school's paper usage by getting people to buy trees and then getting volunteers to come with us to go plant them in their homes," said student Sabrina Lewis. "I'm really excited, but also, we do need people to buy more trees."
Community members can buy an 18 inch to 24 inch red maple or river birch sapling for $5, which includes delivery and COVID-19 safe planting.
The goal is to replace the estimated million sheets of paper that the school uses each year. Students have already sold around 21 trees.
This event was organized by the school's Climate Crisis Control Club in partnership with Massachusetts non-profit organization Tree-Plenish, which began as a senior project in Mansfield and now reaches around 20 states. The student-led nonprofit says it's on target to plant 14,000 trees through partnerships with 90 schools.
The club was started by Lewis and classmate Medeja Rudzinskaite last year and currently has around 13 members.
"Even though we're remote now and we use less trees, we're still trying to offset our usage from previous years," Rudzinskaite said.
Tree-Plenish reached out to Grade 9 world literature teacher Scott Wade at the beginning of the school year and the club was happy to partner with it.
Wade explained that the club is also planning an Earth Day cleanup to beautify local spaces and have a few other projects in the works. Earth Day is on Thursday, April 22.
He said this project has also made him realize that many class handouts could be replaced with a Google document or other virtual rendering.
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Central Berkshire School Officials OK $35M Budget
By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
DALTON, Mass. — The Central Berkshire Regional School Committee approved a $35 million budget for fiscal 2025 during its meeting on Thursday.
Much of the proposed spending plan is similar to what was predicted in the initial and tentative budget presentations, however, the district did work with the Finance subcommittee to further offset the assessments to the towns, Superintendent Leslie Blake-Davis said.
"What you're going see in this budget is a lower average assessment to the towns than what you saw in the other in the tentative budget that was approved," she said.
The fiscal 2025 budget is $35,428,892, a 5.56 percent or $1,867,649, over this year's $33,561,243.
"This is using our operating funds, revolving revenue or grant revenue. So what made up the budget for the tentative budget is pretty much the same," Director of Finance and Operations Gregory Boino said.
"We're just moving around funds … so, we're using more of the FY25 rural aid funds instead of operating funds next year."
Increases the district has in the FY25 operating budget are from active employee health insurance, retiree health insurance, special education out-of-district tuition, temporary bond principal and interest payment, pupil transportation, Berkshire County Retirement contributions, and the federal payroll tax.
The students have also been able to build friendships and experience new things, such as dancing for community events, taking a trip to Ireland and participating in competitions.
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Because of this, traffic will be reduced to one lane of travel on First Street (U.S. Route 7) and North Street between Burbank Street and Abbott Street from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday through at least May 6.
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Independent Connections officially unveiled its Massachusetts branch on Thursdsay with a ribbon cutting. The IT solutions company's specializations include consulting, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.
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Taylor Garabedian scored a team-high 22 points and grabbed five rebounds, and Abby Scialabba scored 16 points for the ‘Canes, who got 16 points, nine rebounds and four assists from Ashlyn Lesure. click for more