The Greene County School Board recently approved a new amenity for the middle school.

The Board heard a presentation by the middle school team, led by Samantha Telleen and Matt Paulsen proposing to install playground equipment on the northwest corner of the middle school. The Board saw data from student surveys where the top three choices of playground equipment were an obstacle course, basketball court and swings. The next three choices the students wanted included a space for four-square, bags or cornhole and other benches. 

Superintendent Brett Abbotts was impressed by the work that the middle school team did, with the leadership of retiring principal Shawn Zanders. 

“This has been a project in the works in terms of research, gathering feedback, and data and information, calling vendors, and getting quotes on certain items, really kind of over the past couple of months. And this team proposed this to me about a week and a half prior to our (May School) Board meeting. And really the presentation and the project, and everything was all put together so nicely that I think it was kind of an easy sell, an easy win for our Board to approve.”    

Abbotts points out involving the students was one of the keys to help drive this kind of initiative.

“This is something that would be a great thing for our kids and for our community as well. Again there’s a lot of pride that went into this and I think that can keep going into this. For students to be able to look back on and say, ‘Well I gave feedback to that, I helped with that, that was my idea,’ and now they can kind of see it come to life I think is a really cool thing.”       

The School Board unanimously approved the project not to exceed $65,000 with funds coming from the voter-approved Physical Plant and Equipment Levy.