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The often-forgotten positive effect of an economic recession is that it brings people together. While the Ravenswood City School District is struggling with impending state budget cuts, community members are rallying to provide assistance.
On Thanksgiving weekend, approximately 70 volunteers from Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, Menlo-Atherton High School’s Girl Scout troop and the Ravenswood Education Foundation remodeled the district’s Teachers’ Training Center so that the portable could be used for a few more years. The volunteers patched holes, replaced the trim that was rotting and the skirt that was warping, painted the inside and outside and refurnished the interior.
Melissa Hall, a Girl Scout and senior at Menlo-Atherton High School, coordinated the project. She contacted volunteer groups and funded the project with donations from private donors and the churches’ “Beyond Compassion Weekend Fund.”
“I just wanted to help out the education system here in any way that I could,” Hall said. “I wanted to do something where you could see it working. It is a stepping stone for teachers to have better education in the teacher-training sessions. It’s for teachers to see that they’re appreciated.”
Hall also worked on the project to complete her Girl Scout’s Gold Award, the highest award that Girl Scouts age 14-18 may earn. “I wanted to help people in an area that I know,” she said.
Hall collaborated with Charley Scandlyn, the executive director of the Ravenswood Education Foundation, and the district to find the appropriate project to do.
“This project will help us provide better professional development for our teachers,” Scandlyn said. “To have a place where we can say ‘we believe in you and we want to invest in you’ is essential. It is so important for us to be able to communicate that. The more we can engage together and work together the better chances we can improve academic achievement.”
People from Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Los Altos, Redwood City and East Palo Alto joined in the remodeling effort.
“It seemed like the perfect thing to do Thanksgiving weekend, to help out people that don’t have as much as we do,” said Craig Hanson from Menlo Park. “It’s a change to not just think of all the things we have, but to serve other people. We wanted to instill [these values] in our kids.”
“It’s giving the teachers a nicer environment to work in,” Morriss Chubb from Los Altos said. “It will show that the community appreciates them. The teachers are the unsung heroes. We want to say that to them in tangible ways.”
Tony Nolasco, originally from East Palo Alto, also joined the volunteer effort. Nolasco graduated from the Ravenswood district in 1982 and now owns his own construction company in Menlo Park.
“I’m just here to help support the good things that are happening in the district to better improve the schools,” Nolasco said. “Hopefully it will improve the kids’ learning and let people who work here concentrate on what needs to be done.”
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