For the past 5 years, VCRCD has restored land on Oak Park Unified School District campuses with funding from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Within this grant agreement is the stipulation that VCRCD staff will work with OPUSD students on restoration projects. They completed pollinator classes and planting new habitats with students from Red Oak Elementary and Oak Hills Elementary in the early years of the project as well as some involvement from the high school, after-school groups on their campus. With a recent grant extension, VCRCD utilized special training from the Center for Land-Based Learning’s Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship (SLEWS) Program to plan and implement outdoor learning for the high school students. The SLEWS Program provides high school students with the opportunity to gain hands-on restoration experience and mentorship from professionals in the environmental field.
This past Saturday, January 10th, our Restoration Team, in collaboration with our Education & Outreach Coordinator, hosted their first Field Day with 16 OPHS students from the National Honor Society Club. Students were divided among four mentors with varying experiences in habitat restoration who provided guidance to the students pertaining to the restoration task at hand and to their endeavors post HS. We planted over 60 native plants at two different sites on the OPHS campus to enhance habitats we had initiated in years past! In addition to planting, VCRCD staff led the students through a series of learning activities involving native plants, invasive species, and the importance of pollinators.
