Thursday, March 29, 2007

Tree Plantings, Internships

Casey Trees, a Washington-based tree conservation group, has planted 80 trees at 10 District schools this month as part of two year-long programs for middle and high schools.

Kelly Miller Middle, Browne Junior High and Charles Hart Middle received about half of the trees through the School Leadership in Urban Runoff Reduction Project. Throughout the school year, Casey Trees, in partnership with Living Classrooms of the National Capital Region, educated students at these schools on trees and their role in preventing storm water runoff pollution. The project is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The high school program, Green Tech, offers students monthly instruction on tree inventory skills, geographic information system technology and mapping, landscape design and tree maintenance. Five trees each were planted at participating high schools: Banneker, Woodson, Seed Public Charter, Cesar Chavez Public Policy Charter School-Parkside Campus, Cardozo, Duke Ellington and McKinley.

Students, teachers and Casey Trees volunteers planted American elm, common hackberry, pin cherry, common persimmon, American holly, red oak, serviceberry, cherry and London planetree on school grounds starting March 7. The final trees were to be planted today at Charles Hart Middle School.

Ten paid summer internships are available for Casey Trees' Urban Conservation Youth Leadership Program, running June 19-July 28. High school students interested in careers in natural resource management should e-mail bbrownstein@caseytrees.org or visit the Web site http://www.caseytrees.org for an application. Completed applications are due April 13.

Youth Tennis Programs

The Latin American Youth Center plans to include tennis in several of its programs this year, using the name Pancho Gonzalez Youth Tennis Academy. The center operates an anchor site in the District and provides programming at several locations in the area. It serves 3,000 low-income and minority children and teenagers every year.

Through the academy, tennis will be incorporated into after-school programs at Powell Elementary School and MacFarland Middle School, and summer enrichment camps in Wards 1 and 4. The academy also will offer scholarships to youths interested in attending other tennis camps.

The tennis programs are funded by a $20,000 grant from the U.S. Tennis and Education Foundation.

Pancho Gonzalez, the academy's namesake, was the first Hispanic tennis player to be ranked as the world's top player. He was born in Los Angeles in 1928 to Mexican immigrants. He ranked No. 1 in the world eight times and was considered one of the top 10 players in the world for the last 20 years of his career. He died at 67 in 1995.

Sports Photographer Wins

Fireu Retta, a senior at Roosevelt Senior High School, won a $1,000 scholarship from DigitalSports DC for his photography of Roosevelt's sporting events.

DigitalSports DC is a Web portal for students to learn about sports photography, journalism, videography and statistics. Students publish their own photos, articles, highlight videos, game statistics and schedules on the Web site http://www.digitalsportsdc.com. This is the first year the site has offered a scholarship.

Roosevelt Vice Principal Maurice Butler, who teaches sports journalism at an after-school DSDC professional development program, has been mentoring Retta and other students for two years.

'Green' School Honored

The new Sidwell Friends Middle School building in Northwest has been recognized as one of the nation's most environmentally friendly schools by a national nonprofit group that promotes the construction of "green" buildings.

The U.S. Green Building Council awarded the contractor on the project, Hitt Contracting Inc., the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum Certificate for the Sidwell project. Completed in September 2006, the 75,000-square-foot project helped Sidwell Friends get back to its overall mission of responsible environmental stewardship, school officials said.

The new school includes four major components: water management, energy efficiency, salvaged and rapidly renewable building materials, and fresh indoor air.

Designed by leading experts in the industry, the LEED rating system is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. Sidwell Friends is the first LEED Platinum Certified K-12 school in the world.

Founded in 1937, Hitt Contracting is one of the 100 largest general contractors nationwide. For more information, visit http://www.hitt-gc.com.

Girls and Careers

The city's first-ever Young Women's Conference on Non-Traditional Careers will be from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the City Club of Washington, 1300 I St. NW.

Sponsored by the D.C. public schools' Office of Career and Technical Education and the Alcanzando Metas (Reaching Goals) Foundation, the conference will bring together students in grades 9 through 12 to discuss empowerment and self-esteem. Those who attend will be taught tools to achieve career goals, and they will have a chance to meet with successful women from government and the private sector.

More than 150 people are expected to attend, including Adriana Ocampo, program executive for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, and representatives of the construction and building trades, law enforcement, automotive technology, and science- and math-based fields.

For further information about the conference, contact Julia Martas at 202-442-5064 or julia.martas@k12.dc.us.

-- Compiled by THEOLA LABBÉ and JILLIAN S. JARRETT