For more than a year, students at St. Joseph’s School and O’Neill Junior High School have been hustling to pick up garbage.
Scouting the area around their schools, nearly 200 children have cleaned up countless trash bags of fast-food and gum wrappers, pop glasses and other detritus under a program started by two parents and a teacher in an attempt to teach good citizenship.
“Environmental concern is very strong in the schools, and we wanted to use that to teach children how to be aware of the community as a whole,” said Liz Reidy, a parent of St. Joseph’s pupils and, along with O’Neill teacher Jim Dohren, a co-founder of the program. “It’s a message I think they got.”
“When we go out around the school, (the kids) cannot believe how much garbage is there,” said Barbara Manley, a life-skills teacher at O’Neill whose class regularly volunteers for garbage detail. “It aggravates them like you would not believe to see all this trash.”
Downers Grove officials agree the program is valuable and hope it catches on elsewhere. Beginning this fall, the efforts of St. Joseph and O’Neill students will be joined by those of pupils at most other Downers Grove schools and incorporated into a new program sponsored by the village.
Dubbed “Adopt/Protect-A-Parkway,” the program is an effort to get children involved in keeping areas near their schools clean while keeping them safe from major thoroughfares, said Bob Shoger, community relations director.
After hearing about the grass-roots effort, village officials considered incorporating the two-school cleanup into an “Adopt-A-Highway” program. But heavy traffic on state roadways such as Ogden Avenue and Butterfield Road worried officials. Rather than risk the lives of youngsters, officials discussed quashing the whole plan.
Enthusiastic youngsters had other ideas, however. More than 100 1st and 3rd graders from St. Joseph’s wrote letters to Mayor Betty Cheever, pleading with her to leave the current program in place and expand it to include other schools.
“These kids pushed a major effort to keep the cleanup going,” said Marita Blanken, a St. Joseph’s parent who helps coordinate the program. “They learned another lesson when the village listened.”
Adopt/Protect-A-Parkway is the only one of its kind, said Steven Ruffolo, assistant director of public works for Downers Grove. “A lot of communities have Adopt-A-Highway, but that has a large element of risk for younger children,” Ruffolo said. “This is a much safer alternative for elementary and middle-school kids.”
Schools that want to participate only have to contact the village’s community relations department, Shoger said, and village commissioners will issue a special proclamation and an outdoor sign honoring the school, bestowing the awards at a school assembly. Hopefully, the village support will reinforce the message that the students are doing their part for the community, he said.