The 2018-19 school year is a busy one for Chelsea High School’s Arbor Club and the Alumni Arbor.
In October, the Bio Club, which works closely with the Arbor Club, along with teacher Holly Reiser and retired teacher Dave Polly, planted the Pollinator Garden.
Teacher Robin DeGracia and students began hanging the tree tags; however, some cracked so they will be fixed and hung during the school year.
Student Mason P. Fecker, a CHS senior, is seeking final approval for his Eagle Scout project-a large composting structure for the Alumni Arbor.
“This compost structure will allow CHS to begin composting lunch scraps during the 2019-20 school year,” said Shawn Sinacola-Rodriguez, a Chelsea High School English and Spanish teacher, who runs the Arbor Club. “In order to fund the purchase of the Cedar wood for the compost structure, we are selling birdhouses made by Bio Club students.”
The birdhouses cost $30 each or $50 if you would like the Arbor Club to place the birdhouse in the Alumni Arbor for your graduating class with your year of graduation on it.
Coming up in the spring of 2019, a Little Free Library will be installed by Gary Munce in the Alumni Arbor in cooperation with the Chelsea District Library.
“With financial support from the CHS alumni and teachers, we were able to hire Dan Lancaster to create a large, treelike Little Free Library,” said Sinacola-Rodriguez. “Arbor Club students painted this beautiful, new library for our community.”
One of the future projects being discussed with the Environmental Science classes is cordoning off a portion of the Alumni Arbor.
“It would no longer be mowed so that it may return to a natural state to be observed and studied by students over a span of 5-10 years,” said Sinacola-Rodriguez.
Student Emma Stanavich and her family will be giving beekeeping equipment to the Arbor Club in the spring. Details of how to keep bees in the Alumni Arbor are being worked out and anyone interested in helping should contact the Arbor Club.
Also in the spring, several trees will need to be replaced.
“We also have plans to plant 8 new trees outside of the 8 classrooms on the ground level of the “C-curve” between the building and the sidewalk adjacent to the Alumni Arbor,” said Sinacola-Rodriguez.
Thanks to many Alumni donations, teacher Duane Moss’s independent study design students Olivia Haber, Dan Lin, and Mason P. Fecker will be designing and constructing benches (with the class of 1963’s bench) with the goal of having enough seating for a class of 32 students to sit in the Alumni Arbor.
If you’re interested in learning more about any of the aforementioned Arbor Club projects, contact Shawn Sinacola-Rodriquez, Chelsea High School, 740 N. Freer Road, Chelsea, MI. 48118, or by calling 734-433-2201 ext. 48118 or at email [email protected].
