Amelia Street School will embrace nature with new trail
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, along with Richmond Public Schools, broke ground at Amelia Street School Tuesday morning for a project that will help create better outdoor access to the green space behind the school for students.
Amelia Street School, located near Maymont, serves students ages 5 to 21 with intellectual, behavioral or complex health needs.
The outdoor access will help encourage teachers and students to use the space as a learning center. That’s a goal of the division’s environmental literacy plan, which the Alliance – a regional nonprofit that helps conserve and protect the Chesapeake Bay – helped create.
“This trail was designed with students as the primary audience. They will use it as a means to develop their curiosity, make observations, and ask questions about the natural world,” said Meredeth Dash, environmental education specialist for the Alliance.
The Alliance and local partners aim to build a quarter-mile-long, wheelchair-accessible path, better known as the Amelia Street Nature Trail, from the school into the large space, which is currently on a steep hill. That is particularly helpful to the school’s population.
“At Amelia Street … we work intentionally to help [students] strengthen self-regulation, build positive relationships, engage academically, and understand that they belong in a learning community,” said school Principal Michael Blount Jr. “Ane of the things that excites me most about this project is that learning takes place here. Uh, we not only stop at the walls of our classroom, we can also expand it outside.”
The project will also include 11,000 square feet of green infrastructure, like gardens and pavements, as well as 59 new trees planted along the perimeter of the yard. Some trees can already be seen in other parts of the yard, which was made possible in 2020 by a grant from the Office of Sustainability at VCU.
In turn, the installations would help capture 25,000 gallons of stormwater annually to conserve and protect the nearby James River.
“The more (students) learn, the more likely they are to advocate for the protection of natural green spaces, for clean air and water initiatives, to protect habitats, and to be general good stewards of our natural resources with a clear focus on sustainability,” said School Board member Stephanie Rizzi (5th District), who represents the district the school sits in.
The construction has been five years in the making, and the Alliance during that time worked with teachers to understand what they would need in order for the school to effectively use the space.
Teachers told Dash that students enjoyed coming out to the space to run around, but often would jump over the fence that currently wraps around the yard.
“So part of the design that we really kept in mind was how do we kind of build a natural way of a structured trail system that allows students to use it and still run and go around, but they don't feel that need to dart off because this is so open,” Dash said, which led to the idea of planting trees.
The Alliance has so far raised over $1 million for the project, but the full cost of getting everything wanted for the space is over $2 million, Dash said.
Dash said that the project helps the Alliance work more closely with RPS’ facilities team, specifically in conducting assessments of external spaces of schools, as previous school condition assessments have mainly focused on the inside of buildings.
“My goal is to continually develop a partnership with RPS facilities, and … as a community partner continually improve and add shade and resilience to all RPS schoolyards,” she said.
The project is expected to be completed by spring time next year.
Contact Reporter Victoria A. Ifatusin at vifatusin@richmonder.org. VCU and the Robins Foundation are donors to The Richmonder, but were not allowed to influence or review this story.
