Trees Planted to Cool, Beautify School

Students at Tulsa Street Elementary School began planting trees Friday to cool their campus and cut energy costs.

The trees will make the schoolyard’s large expanse of asphalt less hot, said Blair Baker, a coordinator with the Hollywood Beautification Team, which organized the planting.

“It breaks up the heat island, so when kids are playing in the summer they’re not baking,” Baker said.

“The fact is, it’s a very large school with no shade,” Principal Judy Moe said. “It’s a sad place to look at. We want kids to feel pleased to be here. [Trees] improve the learning climate.”

The nonprofit tree group, students and parents planted 30 trees Friday and plan to have a total of 140 planted by next week. The trees will take about five years to grow to full size.

The DWP’s Cool Schools program is paying for the trees at Tulsa Street and 41 other Los Angeles Unified School District campuses. The tree project has a nearly $3 million annual budget.

The trees will be strategically planted to shade buildings, lowering air-conditioning costs. They will also provide “outdoor classrooms” where students may gather to read. It costs more than $50,000 to plant the trees and teach the kids about them, Baker said. A Hollywood Beautification educator visited classes and taught students about trees. Children also decorated the school with posters of trees and wrote haiku poems about them.

They also learned how much water the trees will need to survive. The school’s 530 students will be responsible for watering them for a year, until the school’s irrigation system is completed. Each class will adopt five trees, and children will water them about twice a week.

The trees will allow kids to enjoy playing outside during recess, said Laurel Pavone, a parent who supervises children in the playground.

“A lot of the time I have kids come up to me and say, ‘I have a headache. I don’t feel well.’ You know it’s because of the heat,” said Pavone, 39, of Granada Hills.

“The heat would get to me a lot and I’d start feeling sick,” said Pavone’s daughter Marissa, 10. “[Now] if I get sick in the sun, I can just sit under a tree.”