We compost at home, and love what it does for the garden. Big, beautiful, healthy plants, lots and lots of flowers, and bees, butterflies and hummingbirds are all regular visitors. My kids eat and even *enjoy* our homegrown produce.

Of course, home composting is different than the Waste Management version. There are types of waste they can handle in an industrial program that home composters can’t. But it’s still good.

Under Results Based Budgeting, each school’s site budget is loaded with a certain number of dollars based on number of students, calculated through Average Daily Attendance (ADA). How the principals spend those funds is (for the most part) up to them. Needless to say, there is far too little money, and if, like most sites, you can’t afford that extra half-time custodian you need, or an art program, or to hire an experienced veteran teacher, no amount of composting is going to make up for those needs. Nonetheless, every little bit helps.

I personally launched the lunchroom waste sorting program by spending three solid weeks of lunches at Peralta, running the students down a line of carefully and distinctly-labeled bins, with some artful, parent-created 3-D displays showing which items go in which bins. There was no candy or other unhealthy reward system — just a lot of high-energy enthusiasm, high fives, low fives, exclamations of amazement at their knack for getting it right, lots of verbal reinforcement in general, and frequent pointing out of the immediate physical results of how much they were “saving from the garbage” on any given day, and then a little math thrown in to multiply that day by 260 days in a school year, etc. The students got so fired up about watching me digging around in the garbage and “rescuing” compostables, making funny faces, thinking of funny, icky names for the bucket of “soup” that filled up with leftovers of milk, juice and other liquids, asking them if they dared me to drink it, telling them I would only do it if they threw in some toenails and other nasty stuff — squeals of delight, and 100% participation! A few well-placed site visits by Rebecca Parnes from Waste Management to assess our progress (we got an A+!), and one or two follow-ups by me every month to make sure the kids are staying on their toes and not getting sloppy.

This has been an important part of a larger learning process that is happening at Peralta, and the kids are thrilled about it. Their parents keep telling me that their kids are now teaching them — with directorial precision — how to “do it right” at home!

I’m also so glad the district will allow us to keep the money we save. It was pretty incredible to learn just how much we save monthly with this new system. It makes me think we should tackle our PGE bill next. I definitely think the district should be accountable for all costs– and take a hard look at what each school is spending on operations before touching class size and librarians. We need to be smart about how we save money and minimize the impact on our kids.

I’m curious about how the composting is going at Peralta–does anyone know if they have trash monitors at lunch? How long did it take for the kids to learn the ropes? I’d appreciate any feedback from Peralta parents…

Thanks!
Paula–Glenview parent