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- Charter School Focuses
on Agriculture
In winter they do a lot of planting, soil testing and raise 350 broiler chickens in a greenhouse. They also grind the grain they harvested into flour during the winter. Spring starts in February with flowers and vegetables in the greenhouse in preparation for a retail market in the month of May. Spring is also time to plant the gardens and do landscaping around the grounds.
Typical growers in Michigan? No, they are the 380 students in kindergarten through 10th grade of the Countryside Charter School in Benton Harbor in southwest Michigan, the first school with an agricultural and natural resources theme in the state. The students learn all about agriculture through horticulture classes and agriculture lessons incorporated into regular class work.
The school was the brainchild of six southwest Michigan fruit and vegetable growers who came together intending to form a school with a unique theme, according to George McManus III, a vegetable grower in Benton Township. The growers put up the money to purchase 75 acres and a group of investors hold the bond for the building, according to Tom Hurst, agriculture and natural resources coordinator for the school, who was recruited through Michigan State University (MSU) to work at the school. The school receives state funding as it’s a public school.
“We came up with a different theme. We got some help from MSU to develop our curriculum and structural design,” McManus said. MSU’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Education and Communication Systems (ANRECS) has been involved with the school and board since the beginning, according to Kirk Heinze, acting department chair of ANRECS. Cary Trexler, a MSU graduate student, advised the school on curriculum, wrote grants that were successful and briefly helped with the administration of the school. Heinze said MSU continues to work with teachers at the charter school to help them integrate agriculture into the curriculum.
“We’re looking forward to a very long and fruitful relationship with Countryside Charter School. This department is committed to helping them be as good as they can be,” Heinze said. Today the eight-member school board includes growers who meet monthly and are actively involved in what happens at the school.
The growers were not satisfied with how agriculture was handled in traditional schools, according to Hurst. The charter school opened in the fall of 1997 and has jumped in enrollment from 160 the first year, 260 the second year and now 380 this school year. The school will add a grade each year. Approximately 10% of the students are growers’ children, 30% from the inner city of Benton Harbor and the rest from neighboring communities. As there is no busing, parents must provide transportation.
The school now includes 10 classrooms and laboratories, one portable classroom and two acres of vegetable production, 10 demonstration fields, 30 acres of nature trails, along with a greenhouse. There’s an indoor wet lab and a food lab, where a student can do things like rebuild a tractor or taste different varieties of apples, said Ross Scibbe, a fruit and vegetable grower from Benton Harbor who was one of the founding members and now serves as treasurer of the board.
“We do a market garden with all plasticulture drip and a full retail bedding operation in the spring,” said Hurst. The students grow peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn, pumpkins, gourds, edible beans and a wide variety of cut flowers, he said.
What other school would a student be able help plant six different types of beans, harvest, dry, shell, count and sort them and them make them into a delicious bean soup. During a project on sorghum students cut and boiled the sorghum to make molasses. Kindergartners and first graders help with a Peter Rabbit garden while third and fourth graders grown corn, beans, squash and Indian corn in their Three Sisters Garden, Hurst said.
“We use agriculture to teach the basic skills of math. It’s fun they love it,” said Hurst, adding that young students can sit and patiently shell beans for more than 30 minutes.
Two-thirds of the school’s greenhouse is flowers and one-third vegetables in the spring. Plants are started from seed and students cut and layer the plants and help create hanging baskets, Hurst said. The whole month of May and the first week of June, the greenhouse turns into a full-scale retail operation open to the public, which receives good support.
Sustainable forestry is a year-round activity at the school where students remove and replace timber. Students also help landscape the school grounds and work on the turf grass for the athletic fields. Students are also required to be a part of 4-H or Future Farmers of America.
McManus said his own children, an eighth grader and a third grader, look forward to going to the Countryside Charter School each day. They enjoy a lot of hands-on activities and are able to make the connection to the real world around them, he said. McManus’ son and other older students recently completed a seven-week poultry project where they fed, watered, monitored and cared for broiling chickens that will be part of a statewide competition, McManus said.
Students can also elect to enroll in a summer school program, three mornings per week. This summer 50 students will take part in the summer program, an increase from 15 students last year. The program for the older students is geared for adventure while the younger students’ program is more crafts and gardening. During the summer there’s plenty of field trips to orchards and markets as well as travel to agriculture shows, white water rafting, long bicycling trips, hiking and a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Students also do garden maintenance and greenhouse cleanup during the summer.
One of the school’s goals is to keep students in the agricultural industry in the future, whether it’s as producers, in agri-business, Extension or for a chemical company. McManus concedes that most probably won’t become fruit or vegetable growers, but may have plenty of opportunity in ag related businesses. “They’ll have a really good background for that,” he said.
Hurst said because of the small size of the school, he and other 20 staff members, know everyone who walks through the door. Parents and students like the required uniforms of the school – consisting of a mix-and- match dress code with khaki or navy pants, shirts with collars and black or white shoes. No writing is allowed on shirts.
“It has taken away distractions. Families like it,” said McManus.
Hurst said the school does not tolerate troublesome students and follows a rigid code of conduct.
“We’ve got a dress code. I think kids can learn well there,” said Scibbe.
“We’re definitely growing,” said Hurst about Countryside Charter School. Eleventh grade will be added next year and the school will be the career and technical education site for agriculture for 11th and 12th graders in Berrien County. Students will be able to come to the school for a two-and-one-half hour block to study and work in agriculture.
The school has garnered some national attention, as Hurst knows of only two agriculture-related K-12 schools in Arizona and one trying to get started in North Carolina. He said the many interested people visit the school and he fields calls from schools and faraway states. “We get a lot of visitation,” Hurst said.
Copyright, Great American Publishing, The Vegetable Growers News 343 South Union Street - PO Box 128 Sparta, Michigan 49345 616-887-9008 | fax 616-887-2666 | email