Site Walk-Thru
One of the most important meetings in planning your school’s Community Serve Day is the site walk-thru, which occurs before school gets out in June. The site walk-thru will include the site leader (you), the principal (or designated staff), and a team from the school district facilities team to determine the school projects that can be accomplished during CSD. You’ll walk the school and review all the project requests, locations where bark, and landscaping will take place.
To schedule the site walk-through, work with your principal to find a time that works for both of you on the “Walk-Through Schedule”. Each schools district has a different team – check your May site leader emails to find the schedule. The CSD Project Manager will attend all school site walk-thrus that involve new site leaders.
Teacher Projects
We make teacher projects a priority and every teacher that comes to Community Serve Day should be assigned volunteers right away. Each district has an online form for teachers to request volutneers. Links to those are provided in your site leader communications. Principals are to be encouraged to have their teachers, office staff and others from their team come to Community Serve Day to prepare their workspace for the first day. These request forms include if the projects are suitable for younger children or those with physical limitations. CSD volunteers are not allowed to paint walls, since that usually requires a work order from the district. Please check with the CSD Projecet Manager if you have questions.
School Grounds Projects
All of the school projects like landscaping and painting are the next priority. Work with the principal to assign a high/medium/low priority to those projects so you know how to route your volunteers on Community Serve day. It is very important to right-size what volunteers will focus on. Teachers are the first priority, then completing any outdoor projects especially those included delivered bark or play chips. It’s better to move the entire pile of mulch into the gardens and do less weeding or trimming in other areas of the school. Be prepared to write notes, take photos, draw maps, or whatever else you need to ensure the requests will still make sense a few months from now!
Larger and/or custom projects should be discussed with the facilities team from the school district before approving.
Submit Your Project List
Please send a copy of your project list to the CSD Project Manager at these two points in time:
Once you finish the walk-through with the Principal. This is used for budgeting, purchasing supplies, determining how many volunteers you’ll get, and confirming that the work being requested is allowed by the school district.
In the week leading up to the event in August so we can make sure there aren’t any surprises that need to be accounted for.
Project Planning with David Engel – Woodin Site Leader
Here is a copy of the spreadsheet and project details I use for day-of projects. For reference, I have a couple tables for check-in followed by a couple tables I use for project sign-ups that I staff on CSD morning and direct people from during the initial rush. On the project tables, I have sign-up sheets for each project with places for volunteers to write in their names to keep track of how many people have been sent to a project. Here is a link to my spreadsheet for 2022, which I used to create the sign-up sheets. Instructions are included:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13l30y6XGBCrJ2WZtzO6nj63kHljmQhuw4ke6zcbIZ_E/edit?usp=sharing
I also have a one-page write up for each special project, which makes it quick and easy to recruit a lead that morning, if needed. Here’s what I had in 2022:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NquAJr7JL2kgvQHJxRpRVsW752bdOJaLHqMaUymryao/edit?usp=sharing