Board won over

Skits prompt lunch tray change

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

The middle school students awkwardly gathered in the center of the board room, whispering instructions to each other.

When they looked up, they faced their parents, teachers and friends in the audience to begin. They found they were facing the wrong way.

Abashed, they turned around to face the Carbon County District 1 School Board, the student’s intended audience. They whispered and poked each other and then began speaking.
“We are concerned about the environment,” one boy declared.

He peered down at the sheet of paper prepared by his fellow sixth-graders at Rawlins Middle School. “Our goals are to reduce... recycle... and find an alternative to Styrofoam trays in the lunchroom,” he said, outlining the ways he and his classmates are focusing their effort to help the environment.

In a three-act skit, the students illustrated to the board how detrimental it can be to use plastic foam trays. Kids can get sick from hot food leeching to the toxins in plastic foam, was the message of the first act. Next up was a reporter announcing, “This just in: Girl diagnosed with cancer because of Styrofoam trays used at school.” In the last act, strikers protested the 300 trays delivered daily to the landfill, declaring them not biodegradable.

The students let Twisted Sister have the final word in the skit. “We’re not going to take it” came the cry from the boom box in the corner.

The sixth-graders finished their presentation with a mini report based on their research. “Styrofoam is a petroleum-based product that takes thousands of years to degrade,” one student read. “Each year, our school puts about 54,300 trays in the Rawlins Landfill ... We admit that our food stays on the trays for a very short time and the potential harm is low, but we still ask that you find an alternative method of serving food.”

Parents, teachers and the board erupted in cheers and applause when the students’ brief battle ended. Board member Kristi Groshart motioned, Jeff Hitchcock seconded, and the board approved an accelerated investigation of environmentally safe ways to serve food to the Rawlins youth.