Keys Schools Now Have Compostable Utensils & Trays Thanks To Key Largo Students
Key Largo School is repeatedly named as a Gold Level Everglades Champion School by the Everglades Foundation. The students in all grades at KLS are serious about their titles as Everglades ambassadors.
Like other schools in the district, KLS has an Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program. A big focus of AVID is on helping students develop skills in communications and advocacy. Teachers throughout the district receive training in AVID philosophy and techniques.
In 2023, KLS AVID students in fifth and seventh grades looked for ways to advocate as Everglades ambassadors. They researched ways to reduce the impact of their own school on the environment.
Specifically, the students researched the styrofoam trays and plastic utensils in use at the school, found alternatives and looked for the right people to convince. AVID teachers Eva Brown and Pam Caputo succeeded in bringing school district staff, including Pat Lefere, executive director of operations and planning, up from Key West to Key Largo to receive persuasive slideshow briefings prepared and presented by fifth and seventh grade students.
The argument from the seventh grade class was that Key Largo School alone used 11,000 styrofoam trays a month or 110,000 trays in a year that are not biodegradable and add styrene microplastics to the environment. The fifth grade class focused on the $3,281 spent annually on packages of plastic utensils in plastic wrappers. Their slide asked, “Do kids really need a spork with their peanut butter and jelly sandwich, corn dog or chicken nuggets?”
The students focused on more than “recyclable.” They proposed alternatives that must be compostable so they could become useful dirt. The students were at a little disadvantage because the suppliers of the compostable products wouldn’t quote them volume prices. The district staff took the numbers, made the right contacts and found that the students were right.
“Things had changed a little,” Lefere said. “The Miami-Dade School District and other large districts in the state adopted some of these products and the supply chain was moving.”
The result is that if you visit a lunch room in any Monroe County District School this year, you will see trays molded from paper and wooden forks in paper wrappers available if the students want them. All of these items are compostable. They don’t have to be sorted or cleaned. They can all go back to the Earth.
Fifth and seventh grade students within the county advocated for a change and got results.
“They don’t get enough credit for what they did. This was a big deal,” Monroe County School Board Chair Sue Woltanski said, adding Key Largo School students should be recognized for the district-wide changes they inspired.
Frank and his wife Marlene have been permanent Plantation Key residents since 1998. A retired Air Force officer and pilot, Frank collected degrees from several universities; principally the University of South Carolina. Along with a business career, he authored 22 published books on networks and information systems and lectured at New York University and Mississippi State. Locally, he taught at Coral Shores HS, has twice been a Take Stock Mentor, and has twice been the president of the Upper Keys Rotary. He served on the boards of numerous Key’s organizations including the Experimental Aircraft Association, the Wild Bird Center, the Good Health Clinic, and the History and Discovery Center.