Parents, Volunteers Revive Tisdale’s Outdoor Classroom

A donation from a Ramsey business and volunteers from the PTO have kick-started the revitalization of the courtyard at Tisdale School.

Built in the spring of 1998 using funding from the Ramsey Education Foundation, the Tisdale School PTO, a grant, and parent volunteers, a former parking lot was converted into an “outdoor classroom,” with a paved walkway, flowering trees, bird feeders and a pond. Touted at the time as a mini ecological habitat, students used the area to explore nature and science concepts in a hands-on way.

Over the past few years, PTO parents say the courtyard had become underutilized.

“There were a few years where it didn’t get used much, and that was a shame,” Doreen Rosen, a PTO volunteer, said. “It needed a little TLC to bring it back.”

That TLC started with a donation of mulch and volunteer clean up and landscaping from Ramsey’s Naturescape Lawn Maintenance and Design, owned by resident John Reczkowski.

“It’s really getting to be a beautiful space again,” Pam Fishman, another PTO parent, said. “The donation was so generous, and it is giving us the opportunity to find ways for the kids to use and learn from the space.”

Rosen, Fishman and other PTO parents have been volunteering during lunch periods at Tisdale to take students who choose to be in the Garden Club, to go to the courtyard during recess. This week, the volunteers led students in a bulb-planting lesson.

“They love it out here,” Rosen, who commented that the courtyard gives students a safe, educational way to explore nature, said.

The PTO also runs a Compost Club of students who, twice a week, rescue fruits, vegetables and other discarded foods and put them into a composter at the back of the courtyard.

In the coming weeks, volunteers and students will continue plantings, work on the space’s birdfeeders, and start prepping the courtyard for the winter.

In order to implement some of the programs the PTO has planned for the spring - including planting a vegetable and herb garden, and an indoor grow lab that can start seedlings to be planted in the spring - as well as keep up with general maintenance and weeding, the PTO will be relying on donations.

The volunteers will be selling pavers that can be put in the courtyard and collecting donations as a fundraiser to help support the courtyard. Anyone interested in donating can reach out to tisdalepto@yahoo.com.

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