Job Corps creates outdoor classroom

MEADOW LAKES -- Meadow Lakes Elementary School now has an outdoor classroom on nearby Fuller Lake, thanks in part to work done by Alaska Job Corps' construction industry department. Ten carpentry vocation students and one facility maintenance student, along with Job Corps instructors Ron Langenhuizen and Tim Swan, spent last winter and spring working on an elevated walkway and teaching platform included in the school's outdoor classroom.

Meadow Lakes fourth-grade teachers Jan May and Lauri Zimmer first worked with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game then later with U.S. Fish and Wildlife in order to implement a trail and viewing platform for the outdoor instruction curriculum. Fish and Wildlife secured a $20,000 grant for the platform, and passed the project on to Matanuska-Susitna Borough public works project manager Chuck Kaucic last year.

The project's cost ended up grossly under-funded, according to Kaucic. Fish and Game secured $9,000 more for the project but the borough and Meadow Lakes still had to find alternative ways to get the estimated $60,000 platform built for less than $29,000.

Enter Job Corps. Mat-Su Valley Job Corps has been involved in eight large service projects over the last nine years, along with numerous smaller projects such as building fences for the local women's resource center. Kaucic stressed that when a project has full funding, the borough uses contractors to complete projects. But when the funding for a project just isn't enough, Kaucic said that volunteers like Job Corps are a good way to bring an otherwise dead project to life.

"All the different people helping out helped this project become a success, instead of not being able to happen," said Kaucic. "Job Corps wouldn't work on this if it didn't also provide formative training for its students. This wasn't just bailing us out, this (type of work) helps the students learn."

Job Corps construction industry supervisor Harry Howkins agreed.

"It's a double-edged sword," Howkins said. "The work we do enhances the students' training and provides a service to the community at the same time."

The students spent the last six months reviewing the engineering plans, framing the platform in the shop -- for less impact on the Fuller Lake area -- and welding the platform and walkway together on site. Most of the work had to be done in the winter time; the steel bar grating used for the platform had to be carried across the ice in order to avoid cutting trees in the outdoor classroom. Construction Unlimited volunteered its time to move the steel across the ice in February, and a father of one of the Meadow Lakes students drove the piles the platform sits on 17 feet deep into solid ground during the 2002 winter. After the piles were driven the project was postponed for one year due to ice melting before the grating could be carried across.

The platform itself is 24 feet by 24 feet, and is made of a light penetrating steel mesh. There is seating made from recycled plastic on three sides of the platform. This ecologically-designed viewing deck is four feet off the water to prevent unnecessary damage to the ecosystem at Fuller Lake.

In the past, viewing platforms like this were made of wood, but the wood caused damage to the living organisms under the deck. The prefabricated base will support a classroom of children, and provides a more environmentally sound approach than romping out into the muck with rubber boots, stomping down algae and destroying fragile ecological systems.

Because of the volunteer work done by the Job Corps students, there was actually grant funding left over. Those funds were used to build a steel kiosk for the grade-school students to design panels to interpret what they are studying. There are eight double-sided panels available for the kiosk, so each year students will be able to set up new information panels that are specific to what the students are studying.

"The great thing now is that the students can manipulate the (outdoor classroom) system from what they see right then, instead of having the same interpretive walk each year," Kaucic said.

The final stages of the platform are scheduled to be finished sometime this week. Once the hand rails are welded into place, the trail, platform and kiosk will be ready for student use in the fall.