By Gary Ogle & Bob Strohm
Gogle@wbcowqel.com
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
Pioneer Career and Technology Center students returned to their home school communities Friday to help spruce up their towns for the school’s annual Pioneer Community Service Day.
The morning hours of Pioneer Community Service Day for some Buckeye Central students enrolled at Pioneer were spent washing the New Washington Fire Department trucks.
“We are doing a lot of volunteer work, it representing Red Ribbon Week which is drug awareness,” Ryan Shepherd explained. “We just took a tour, learned about all the equipment here, and washed the trucks; just had a lot of fun.”
Just outside of New Washington at the Cranberry Hills Golf Course students were cleaning up brush around the golf course.
Tina Rhine, a Language Arts Instructor, was overseeing the students’ progress.
“It gives them a chance; some of them know each other, see each other around the school, maybe even from the same school district, but are in different programs. So this gives them an opportunity to bond with each other. I think they feel blessed to be able to give back especially at the end of the day. I think they leave their job site with a fulfillment of the fact that they have given,” Rhine said.
The other groups of Buckeye Central students were busy working at St. Bernard’s School and back at Buckeye Central working.
Seventeen-year-old Nate Mullions is a senior from Bucyrus at Pioneer and is enrolled in the culinary arts program, but Friday he was at Aumiller Park sprucing up the playscape.
“I guess this is for a good cause,” Mullins said. Last year he worked inside during the Community Service Day at city Hall. “The little kids play in the park.”
Bucyrus Pioneer students divided into two groups at Aumiller. There was another group at Millenium Park, one at the high school and another helping to build a handicap accessible ramp.
Wynford senior Tessa Starner enjoyed the fact she didn’t have to travel to Pioneer and could come directly to Wynford on Friday. Starner was busy painting the front of the home stands at the football field. Normally she would be studying in the Pioneer cosmetology program.
“It’s nice to come back to our home school and not have to travel,” Starner said. “We’ve got three groups and they just kind of split us up. We went with our teachers.”
The other groups of Wynford students were busy painting parking lot curbs and working in Nevada.
Out at Colonel Crawford, senior Elvis Burkey was back to work on the reconstruction of the log cabin for the second straight year. He’s used to putting things together in the Pioneer auto technician program.
“It’s a lot further along than where we were last year,” Burkey said. “Then we were putting in concrete and stones on the foundation. It’s really coming along nice.”
Some of the Colonel Crawford students that came back were busy cleaning up the landscaping at the high school while others helped haul out unwanted materials out the basement for disposal.