By Aimee B., parent
On Saturday, Oct. 13, South Loop students, parents, staff and community members came out in large numbers for the Fall Clean and Green. About 70 members of the SLES community gathered to clean up Mary Richardson Park and our school grounds. Nathaneil Winston, of the Third Ward Alderman’s Office, stopped by to thank the community for all of our efforts to make our school and our neighborhood a better place.
The BETA club got us off to an early start with raking the area under the pine trees and sweeping the playground. One parent provided gloves and led a group of Girl Scouts around the campus to pick up trash while another parent arrived with compost from Spoke & Bird. The Clean & Green Committee purchased gloves and refuse bags with a gift card provided by Home Depot. Our community filled over 10 bags with leaves and rubbish. Once the bags were ready, our students celebrated with exhilarating rides on the utility cart to drop them off for Streets and Sanitation to pick up.
Throughout the clean up, our volunteers were sufficiently caffeinated and well-fed by the kind donations of Peet’s Coffee and Trader Joe’s. When all of our hard work was complete, everyone who contributed to the Fall Clean & Green dined on delicious pizza from Armand’s Victory Tap that was generously donated by the Third Ward Alderman’s Office.