Green tradition at Edmonds school

Published 11:20 pm Monday, November 17, 2008

MARTHA LAKE — When Katy Rubinkowski began campaigning to remove herbicides from Martha Lake Elementary School, her daughter, Hope, was in second grade.

At the time, some parents didn’t realize that herbicides could be dangerous. Rubinkowski spent a year attending PTA meetings and talking with Edmonds School District officials, trying to convince them to shelve chemicals.

In 1998, she succeeded and Martha Lake became one of the first schools in the state to ban herbicides and almost all uses of pesticides. Volunteers agreed to pull weeds and maintain flower beds.

Though Hope left Martha Lake long ago and is now a freshman at the University of Washington, Rubinkowski returned to Martha Lake Elementary School this fall as a second-grade teacher.

For Rubinkowski, returning to the school meant returning to the flower beds as a volunteer gardener.

The program she founded a decade ago has blossomed and is now as much a part of Martha Lake as the playground or the entryway.

First-grade students grow organic kale, marigolds and potatoes in gardens behind the school. The PTA sets aside money for the gardeners, and students volunteer at weekend work parties with their parents, helping maintain the schoolyard.

District maintenance crews don’t spray herbicides at the school. In exchange, volunteers handle weeding and much of the school’s landscaping.

“I think we’re teaching the kids of the next generation to be aware of their environment,” Principal Jeanne Moore said. “It’s really fun to see everyone out there of all ages.”

In recent years, as awareness of the potential danger of pesticides has grown, more schools have moved to reduce their reliance on chemicals. But because organic landscaping requires more manpower and money than traditional methods, most schools in Washington still spray weeds.

Martha Lake is the only school in the Edmonds School District that has banned herbicides. And it only uses pesticides for cases such as hornet nests where the safety of a child could be at risk.

“It’s a matter of resources — time and money,” said Paul Koehn, grounds foreman for the Edmonds School District. “We have over 40 sites, most of them with active schools, and we have a crew of 10 people to take care of all of those sites. It’s over 75 acres per person and we don’t have the resources to go and manually remove weeds and brush in all the places that need attention. So herbicides become an important tool we do utilize.”

In Marysville, pesticides are only sprayed a few times a year, and parents are notified beforehand, maintenance supervisor Keith Stefanson said. The district has reduced its pesticide use in the last few years and, like the Everett School District, it uses pesticides available at hardware stores.

Marysville has also experimented with different types of landscaping, like wildflowers, to minimize weeds at its newer schools.

“The goal is to be as natural and use as little as possible,” Stefanson said.

A new crop of parents have taken over the landscaping program at Martha Lake. Led by parent Ron Martinez, who’s also president of the district’s PTSA, they’ve planted native trees and flowers and incorporated old tree stumps and small patches of unbridled vegetation into the schoolyard.

Orange leaves fall from a maple tree. A fir tree planted four years ago now looms over parents and kids. A few strands of huckleberries grow in soil that used to be overrun with blackberries. Volunteers have gotten rid of the invasive blackberries by tilling the land with tractors and covering it with 6 inches of wood chips.

Martinez recently planted 450 donated tulip bulbs in front of the school.

Martinez, a retired engineer, used to work for a chemical company. He said herbicides don’t always harm people, but if they’re used improperly, they can. He volunteered to lead the Martha Lake effort to protect his daughters and other kids. His youngest daughter Jennifer is in sixth grade and will leave Martha Lake for middle school next fall.

He wants to stay involved with the project but hopes another parent steps up to lead the effort next year.

It can be difficult, but both Martinez and Rubinkowski find reward in watching flowers bloom and kids play on a ­chemical-free lawn.

A few months ago, a teacher led Rubinkowski on a orientation tour of Martha Lake Elementary to help her get acquainted with the building.

“She turned to me and said, ‘This school is pesticide-free,’ ” Rubinkowski said, smiling at the memory. “I said, ‘Yeah, I know.’ I was really proud to say I had a hand in it.”

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.