The Greene County School Board took another step forward to bringing some amenities to fruition for high school students.

Last week, the Board approved an amount not to exceed $63,500 from the Max Johnson Educational Trust for improvements for the greenhouse. Superintendent Brett Abbotts is excited to see what the opportunities are with a working greenhouse.

“Getting our greenhouse back into the condition that it really needs to be, or really just getting it into the condition in the first place. And then really setting a vision for how that greenhouse can be used and how we can utilize that within our curriculum as well is pretty incredible. I’m really excited to kind of see that get up and going. Mr. Kehoe has created a great vision for how we can move forward with our ag program and with the greenhouse, and so I just kind of seeing all that come together will be awesome!”   

Another item the Board approved was an amount not to exceed $40,000 for a six-row planter from Rueter’s Red Power in Grand Junction for the students to use on their test plot near the high school. Agriculture Teacher Steve Kehoe appreciates the partnership with the local ag-dealer and he has other plans such as installing buffer strips around the retention ponds and looking into teaming up with Landus Cooperative and their Sky Scout service to give students even more opportunities. 

“Just to have someone explain everything from the operation to combine, to looking at aerial photos of the plot, showing the students the soil of the plots, because of all this digital mapping that goes through, there is so much out there. And now if we can get Sky Scout listed there, they can do a foiler measurement throughout the whole summer, it’ll see how the kids can correlate all that with yields, soil type, fertilizer rate. So, to me we’re just kind of scratching the surface and trying to make this thing something wonderful.”  

Work is expected to start later this school year on the greenhouse.