Neighborhoods come together for school rallies

Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Monday, August 09, 2010

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Students, families and community supporters gathered at 21 sites around Lexington for the Neighborhood Back-to-School Rallies.

Students, families and community supporters gathered at 21 sites around Lexington for the Neighborhood Back-to-School Rallies.

Students, families and community supporters gathered at 21 sites around Lexington for the Neighborhood Back-to-School Rallies.For the first time, each of the rally sites offered school supplies for all grade levels.Seedleaf, a nonprofit that promotes community gardening, showed kids how to plant bean and corn seeds.LFUCG's booth spotlighted recycling items like aluminum cans.Children could dabble with paints at the Living Arts & Science Center's booth.Neighborhood organizers set up games for the kids and served up hotdogs and burgers.Members of the Lafayette High football team played with the kids and helped hand out school supplies at Duncan Park.Alison Hayes (in white pants), the new principal at LTMS, greeted students and parents at Duncan Park.

For a fifth straight year, the Neighborhood Back-to-School Rallies brought students, families, school leaders and community supporters together to celebrate the start of school. 

“We’re modeling what active citizenship is, what community involvement is,” Alison Hayes, the new principal at Lexington Traditional Magnet School, said in thanking all the participants at Duncan Park.  

Hayes and many of her staff walked through the area from LTMS to William Wells Brown Elementary to the park – inviting residents to the festivities. 

“A lot of people with kids and grandkids were on their porches, so we stopped to talk,” she said. 

Twenty-one neighborhoods hosted rallies Aug. 7, sending some 8,000 students home with backpacks and basic school supplies. For the first time, there were supplies for all grade levels at each site.  

“It levels the playing field for kids walking into school that first day,” said Stu Silberman, superintendent of Fayette County Public Schools, who dropped by several parks. 

Grassroots supporters also organized kids’ activities, entertainment, food, speakers, door prizes and resource booths. Among those set up at Duncan Park were the Lexington Fayette County Health Department, the Living Arts & Science Center and the Lexington Humane Society.

This year’s theme was “Live Green Lexington.” The city’s Department for Environmental Quality and groups such as Bluegrass PRIDE were on hand to promote recycling and other healthy practices.  

“You get some dirt in the pot, plant one of these seeds in the dirt, water it and put it in the sun, and it’ll grow,” Harrison Elementary kindergartener Daimonica Mayes explained at one picnic table.

 

She spent much of her morning with the nonprofit group Seedleaf, which promotes community gardening.

 

“We want to expose them to the concept of growing their own food,” said educator Angela Baldridge, who offered bean, Indian corn and sweet corn. “It’s not so hard to get started, just putting a seed in the ground.”

 

 

LexLinc – a partnership of citizens, government services and agencies – has been the chief coordinator of the back-to-school rallies. However, because of budget cuts, this is the last year LexLinc will spearhead the effort. Other community organizations have expressed interest in taking the lead.