We've sure been missing you this summer. The school is never the same without the smiles and laughter of children. While you have been away, our custodial team has been cleaning everything inside the building, and many of our teachers have been coming back to set things up for an awesome year. I always love the excitement that a new school year brings. One thing I am also very excited about is the help we have received from the Clayton PTA and our AISD Grounds team to address the long-term challenges on our Clayton field. Since we opened in 2006, we have battled the issue of trying to grow grass on the field. It's a dry and rocky place, and our resourceful kiddos have figured out ways to run around and have lots of fun in the dirt, dust, and mud regardless of what's out there :). Some of you may remember that we spent some time and put in some effort seeding the field a few years back and keeping students off of the field for several months. We even set up a rotation schedule for the kids to play on the field by grade level during different weeks once we reopened the area in order to give it some time to rest and grow. Needless to say, our efforts were not successful with almost 2000 little feet running in one spot every day. Dust and dirt are all that remained on the field, and it seemed every year people brought up suggestions about addressing the space.
After hearing the same requests many times over, this summer, for one final shot, our campus, the Clayton PTA, and AISD Grounds teamed up to finance and install a strong (sod) growth base on the field. This is our one and final best shot to try to get something to grow there for the campus (even weeds would be nice). Below are photos documenting the big transformation. Of course, we loved having the big rains in early July, and everything has been looking great since there are no students running around. While I'm not sure how long we can keep it alive for the long term, this final "best shot" effort along with the watering variance we got to regularly sprinkle the area will show us once and for all if we can have some designated green space on the Clayton field.
Check out the photos below and recognize that we need everyone's help and support to keep the field alive once the school year starts. We will have loads of kids running on it each day, and we hope to give it a rest at least in the afternoons and on weekends. AISD Grounds will hand mow the field and keep it fairly high for a while so that it can be better sustained. Certainly this is not an investment that we can make annually, as we have many additional campus instructional needs. Hopefully, we will be successful in maintaining this little slice of greenspace in addition to the other great outdoor spaces that our campus offers.
Please join me in giving a huge thank you to Russ McElrath with AISD Grounds, Dave Downing with Austin ISD, and our PTA for joining with us to fund this project! Beautiful!!
