Madison County Board recognizes students' “trashformation” 

EDWARDSVILLE — Students were honored Wednesday night at the Madison County Board meeting for their “trashformation” and vision of garbage.

Five youth were recognized for their imagination in recycling trash as part of the county’s Resource Education Program, formerly known as the Green Schools Program.

“Students were invited to create new, useful items out of materials that would otherwise be discarded,” Eve Drueke, the program’s coordinator, said.

Drueke said there were 367 kindergarten to fifth grade students from dozens of public, private and parochial schools across Madison County participated in the annual competition.

“The aim of our competitions is to promote thought about the wonderful things the county has to offer,” she said. “We had some fantastic entries this year.”

The competitions included: Clean Air Bookmarks, which was co-sponsored by Madison County Health Department and Madison County Trails, PhotoVoice photography as well as the “Trashformations”

Drueke, along with Chairman Kurt Prenzler and Board members Tom McRae and Chrissy Dutton, both of Bethalto, and David Michael and Phil Chapman, both of Highland, presented the awards to the students.

The annual Resource Education Program concluded last week with an awards ceremony for students and teachers celebrating their positive impacts they’ve had on the school and community, Drueke said. She said the program is in its 27th year and recently it changed the name to Resource Education from Green Schools.

“One of the most important practices for our program is to be guided by the needs of our residents and our institutions,” Drueke said. “With that in mind, I’m excited to announce our program will undergo significant changes for the 2017 to 2018 school year.”

She said there will be collaboration with county residents, leaders and educators from public to parochial to homeschooling organizations to determine needs, interests and how best they can supported and the name change helps to reflect what will take place.

“Resource education is about performing with efficiency and using what we have wisely,” Drueke said.

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