Sean C. Morgan
School District 55 has been trimming and removing trees, partially to fix maintenance problems and to spruce up appearances, at the high school and Oak Heights Elementary.
“The trees at Oak Heights, some of those branches were getting rotten,” said Dave Goetz, maintenance supervisor. “As we started trimming the trees up, it started to get worse as far as the appearance.”
Having something that looked, after trimming, like “Charlie Brown” trees in front of the school wasn’t conducive to the district’s goals for appearances at that school, Goetz said. The district cut two of the trees down.
The district also is in the process of painting, cleaning and taking care of safety issues around Oak Heights, Goetz said. Between the gym and main building, the district also removed blackberries and ivy, brought in new topsoil and planted grass.
The district did the same painting and cleanup at Foster last year.
The goal is to get the district’s buildings on a cycle for painting and keeping the buildings where they should be, Goetz said.
Last school year, the district also fenced the back side of Oak Heights and the playground. “A lot of that was for vandalism purposes. The school was starting to be vandalized a lot.”
Also, security was a concern, especially following the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut in December, Goetz said. That heightened everyone’s awareness about security.
Hawthorne had been fenced but the fence has not been re-installed since the completion of the work on the ball fields. Foster has not been fenced.
“There’s going to be a discussion with the new administrator with what they’d like to see out there,” Goetz said. Glenna DeSouza has resigned as principal at Foster, and the decision to fence the campus has largely been up to the building administrator.
At the high school, the district trimmed an old oak tree on the south side, behind the auto shop, Goetz said.
“The tree is still there. It was not taken out. We had a professional tree trimmer come in and trim the branches that were overhanging the building.”
It’s difficult to get on the roofs and clean leaves during the fall, and the leaves have been damaging the roofs of the outer buildings, Goetz said.
“There were some branches also in that oak tree that were rotted. They also took those out for safety.
“It’s a very, very old tree and sure noticeable in the district.”
The trimmer estimated the work will eliminate 50 to 60 percent of the time to clean up after that tree, Goetz said.
The district also completed some work on the west side of the high school, along the fence line, Goetz said. The hedges along the fence had reached 15 to 20 feet tall. They were trimmed down, but they will grow back. He plans to manage them as they grow and keep the hedge looking nice, rather than out of control.
Neighbors along the fence line had been complaining about youths and adults going behind the hedges, smoking marijuana, drinking beer and urinating, Goetz said. “It was an appearance issue and a safety issue.”
The district also has trimmed trees at the baseball field.
The district removed trees in front of and northeast of the auditorium in April and landscaped the area, Goetz said.
The district trimmed some trees at Hawthorne as well, and the district has done some work on other trees, Goetz said. No work of this type is planned at Foster, Holley or the junior high, but the district continues to work on the landscaping at Crawfordsville, used by Head Start and a Linn-Benton-Lincoln Education Service District program.
“We don’t have the funds to continue repairing and sometimes replacing these roofs because of what these trees are doing to them,” Goetz said. “We’re not focused on taking trees down just because somebody doesn’t like them.”
The district is concentrating on taking care of its buildings, being proactive and doing it before there is a serious problem caused by leaves on rooftops, he said.