Students at Piper High School are restoring the “Piper Woods,” an area near Piper High School that was once used for an outdoor classroom.
The Piper High School 20/20 Leadership Program students are starting the project this year and hope to complete it by May of 2016, said Cole Oakland, a junior at Piper who is working on community outreach with the 20/20 Leadership program.
Located between the high school and elementary school, the Piper Woods area was dedicated in 2003 and initially used as an outdoor classroom, but it has not been kept up since 2005, he said.
The Piper Woods was dedicated to former Piper teacher Sandy McMahon Young, whose name is engraved on a sundial there, he said. The conference room at the new Patricia Diane Kane Community Center also is named for Sandy Young.
Young taught second and fifth grades in the Piper schools for 16 years, and after resigning her teaching position, ran and was elected to the Piper School Board. She died in 2002 from cancer. She was a Piper High School graduate, and also had degrees from Kansas State University and Emporia State University.
The group would like to restore the area so it can be used as an outdoor classroom again and as a place for the community to use, Oakland said. A bridge goes through a patch of woods and ends at an open classroom area, he said.
Piper 20/20 Leadership program plans to clean up the trash and debris at the site, he said, and to make it usable again. There are plans to make a community garden there, he added.
Oakland said about 15 Piper students are participating in the Piper 20/20 Leadership program.
The Piper Woods project may have a big community volunteer event this summer, he added.
