Video:

Transcription:

Innovation HS Students: Welcome to Mondays With Maria. Here's our superintendent, Dr. Maria Vazquez. Happy Earth Day!

Announcer: Presented by ADDITION Financial Credit Union. Here's OCPS Superintendent Dr. Maria Vazquez.

Dr. Vazquez: Thank you for that wonderful introduction. This week, we celebrate Earth Day. It began back in 1970, and at that time, many people began focusing on ways to protect the Earth. And one great example of individuals who are looking to protect the earth is found right here in one of our high schools, and that's Wekiva High School at their incredible aquaponics garden. Another great example can be found at Innovation High School, where they started a plant pantry project. Take a look.

Alaina Constantino, Innovation HS Teacher: So today, guys, we're going to be planting different species for our plant pantry.

Sabrina, Innovation HS Student: We grow all different types of crops here to give to other schools in the district, like elementary schools and middle schools.

Alaina Constantino, Innovation HS Teacher: One of our more meaningful projects is the project that we started with the green school program to develop a plant pantry to support the garden in every school initiative. 

Sabrina, Innovation HS Student: So, here we have a bunch of different crops. We have some herbs, and we have some carrots in here. We have these look like milkweed right here. These are great pollinator flowers. They are monarch butterflies, love them. So, we do try to help our ecosystem with different flowers and such.

Alaina Constantino, Innovation HS Teacher: We're the only agroecology program in the district, which means we actually use ecological concepts to be able to grow food and also flowers for sustainable crop production. Each group can go ahead and grab their 40-cell tray, and we're going to fill it up with the soil we made the other day, so our students can use and build soil. And then we've planted over 2,000 different species of crop, everything from a brussels sprout to kale, to herbs like cilantro and pollinator species such as milkweed, so that we can promote every school having access to healthy living crops at no cost to that school.

Miranda, Innovation HS Student: And that way, they can learn to grow their own food. So I think that's very good that they get to learn how to take care of plants, how to sustain life.

Sabrina, Innovation HS Student: I think that's super important, especially nowadays. I think people should be able to grow their own food, learn where their food comes from, and be sustainable in our community. I think that's amazing to teach our younger people.

Miranda, Innovation HS Student: I’m so glad to be part of this and to be able to give back to my community. And I feel like, in a way, I am helping everyone, and I'm just super glad to be doing that.

Dr. Vazquez: And we have so much more than gardens in our schools. We have school recycling programs, energy conservation, water conservation, and waste reduction programs throughout our district, in our incredible schools. Thank you for watching. There'll be more of this conversation on our podcast. Just search for wherever you get your podcast. For Mondays with Maria.

Announcer: For an extended conversation on today's topic. Listen to the Mondays with Maria podcast available wherever you get your podcasts. Mondays with Maria is presented by Addition Financial Credit Union. Count as in for every step of your financial journey. Learn more at Additionfi.com. For more OCPS news and information, visit TheSlice.ocps.net. I'm your announcer, Emily Hannon, a student at Audubon Park School. Thanks for watching, and have a great week.