Middle School, PTSA Give Back to Newport Mill

For the first time Newport Mill Middle School combined its Parent Teacher Student Association meeting with a .

“This is part of a community builder,” said Panagiota Tsonis, principal of the middle school. “It builds a connection to the school community and continues to foster relationships within this community.”

Tiger Green Workday is a day when students get involved in community service.

“The goal was to help beautify the school grounds,” said Scott Harper, PTSA president.

On Saturday, April 9 at 9 a.m., the intimate group started with a brief meeting in the parking lot to let students and parents know what was going on at school with each grade. Then local artist Jason Swain, a native of Australia and a current Kensington resident, demonstrated chainsaw sculpting and created a Red Tail Hawk out of a log of wood. He said a piece like this would sell for $300-400.

Lana Pauls, a Kensington resident, came out to support the event with her daughter Aida Stevenson, a 7th grader at .

“The community is really important to us and I love to invest in whatever school she is going to,” said Pauls.

Stevenson was excited about the chance to clean up school grounds, especially because it was her idea to get this activity jump-started this year.

“We talked to Scott a few weeks ago to organize [the event],” Stevenson said.

The 7th grader said that the goal of cleaning up the school grounds of trash and laying down mulch was to make the school safer and to promote more community togetherness.

“If people throw their trash around [school grounds], people can get hurt,” she said. “It’s cleaner now so no one will want to throw their trash.”

They purchased much of the mulch from the neighboring high school.

The cleanup of school grounds was done in previous years, but this was the first year they linked the event with a Saturday PTSA meeting. The purpose of joining the two events was to encourage all parents, students and teachers to attend more meetings, since during the week attendance has been low.

Ana Deysi Menendez and her grandson, Carlos Arias, a 6th grader at the school, attended their first meeting together. They make up the population that the school is trying to get out to more PTSA meetings.

“I’m trying to get more Spanish people to come to the meeting,” Menendez said. "It’s not easy; you call people and they never attend.”

There was minimal participation at this year’s event but it’s a step in the right direction, according to Tsonis because they plan on having more events surrounding PTSA meetings.

“We’re trying to bring out more parents and students by involving guest speakers, changing times and dates and trying new things,” said Tsonis.