Be true to your school: Scout’s honor
Girl Scout Alex Karpp and Boy Scout Gage Smith complete projects to enhance campus life for students
Valencia freshman Alex Karpp chose to use her Girl Scout Silver Award to benefit three schools in the Saugus Union School District.
As part of her Silver Award Project, the Senior Girl Scout chose to create mobile game and activity carts for students to use when they are unable to play on the playground due to injuries or other reasons.
“It’s a cart that had board games on it for people who had special needs or were injured they could play and we had crafts for them to do,” Karpp said.
Karpp said she chose to pursue this project because of her own love of board games and her personal connection to the district as a graduate of North Park Elementary.
“I was searching for ideas of what to do and then I thought that would be good for me since I like board games,” she said.
The project then spread to three SUSD schools— Bridgeport, North Park and Rosedell—that all implemented the game and activity carts on their campuses.
“This is a project she had been working on for another school and she found a way to help our school,” Rosedell Elementary School Principal Kathy Stendel said at Tuesday’s Governing Board meeting honoring Karpp.
Overall, it took Karpp more than 50 hours to complete the project for the three Saugus district schools.
“The principals were excited about it,” Karpp said.
As she moves toward her Girl Scout Gold Award, Karpp said she hopes to continue using her ability to serve others by raising and training a service dog.
Students at Rosedell Elementary School now have a new, safe track to run on, thanks to an Eagle Scout Project completed by Saugus High School senior Gage Smith.
As a former Rosedell student, Smith knew he wanted to give back to his former elementary school.
“I knew going in that I wanted to do it for a school and my first idea was to go to Rosedell since I went there and I know some teachers there,” Smith said. “That was my first choice and then if nothing else worked out I could help another school in the district.”
But after meeting with the school’s administration, he found out that the school was in desperate need of a new track for its students to run and play on.
“Our running track—very well-used by our students—was deemed unsafe by our Risk and Safety Management. It had a lot of potholes, a lot of worn, a lot of use,” Rosedell Elementary School Principal Kathy Stendel said at Tuesday’s Governing Board meeting honoring Smith. “So we came up with a huge project for him.”
Smith thought the project was a perfect fit for him since he remembered when the track was installed and enjoyed playing on it during his time at Rosedell.
“I was there when they put (the track) in,” Smith said. “It was something they really needed and something I used and had been involved with and saw the creation of, so I had good memories of it.”
Throughout the summer, Smith planned and organized the refurbishing of the running track by gathering materials and volunteers for the project.
“I worked a lot mid-July and the actually project itself was the beginning of August,” Smith said. “There was one big Saturday when I had 50 volunteers and the next Saturday about 15 to 20 to finish up some stuff.”
Together, the crews worked to remove overgrown areas, replace cracked granite and install new materials to make the track usable again.
“They spent over four and a half hours going through the track breaking it, kneading it, laying out new gravel and making it safe and smooth for all of our Rosedell children to use,” Stendel said.
Altogether, Smith said the project took about 200 manhours to complete.
For Smith the project was worth it because it made a difference not only for the students, but also for the teachers and administration.
“I went to an assembly a few months ago at school and talked to some kids. They were grateful that it was fixed and kind of reluctant because they have to run on it again, but still happy,” Smith said. “A lot of the teachers were happy too because it’s part of their school.”