Two outdoor classrooms dedicated at Anderson County schools

Construction has been completed on new outdoor environmental classrooms at Dutch Valley and Fairview Elementary Schools in Anderson County. Students, officials, and volunteers celebrated with a Nov. 20 ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The open air classrooms were built with a $20,000 grant awarded to Keep Anderson County Beautiful in the spring of 2012, a press release said. The grant was from Lowes Charitable and Educational Foundation.

The new classrooms each include an 18-foot by 36-foot concrete pad with a covered pavilion and picnic tables that allow students to see and study nature in all seasons even in the rain. The two schools also have built wetlands on their properties that are fed by storm water from the schools’ roofs and parking areas. In addition, rainwater from the pavilions’ roofs is collected to augment the flow to the wetlands during hot summer weather, the release said.

Selected students from each school gave thank-you presentations during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, while other students sat in the pavilion enjoying the unusually warm weather, the release said.

“Lowes has a long-standing commitment to being a community partner in improving education through its grant program and is delighted to work with Keep Anderson County Beautiful in creating this unusual learning environment,” Lowes’ representative Tony Thompson said at the Fairview Elementary ceremony.

“It is very gratifying to see how much the children enjoy learning and how this pavilion, situated next to the constructed-wetland, will be used by them and their parents to appreciate the importance of wetlands in our environment,” Lowes’ representative Teresa Beavers said.

Keep Anderson County Beautiful, or KACB, is a nonprofit organization and affiliate of Keep America Beautiful.

“We are happy to be the conduit and organizer to make this type of community project possible with funding from the Lowes Charitable and Educational Foundation and cooperation with the Anderson County School District,” KACB Chair Ruby Miller said. “These pavilions will be an asset to their host schools for generations to come.”

For more information on KACB, visit the website at http://www.KeepAndersonCountyBeautiful.org.

The websites for the Lowes Foundation are http://www.lowes.com/cd_Charitable+and+Educational+Foundation_936258779_  and http://responsibility.lowes.com/environment/our-partnerships/keep-america-beautiful/.