Park Tudor Blogs

At the recent Indianapolis Thriving Schools ceremony, Mayor Joe Hogsett and the Office of Sustainability recognized Park Tudor. “The Indianapolis Thriving Schools Challenge was born because so many Indianapolis schools had taken steps to improve sustainability in their classrooms – and it became clear that the City needed a way to recognize and support them,” said the Mayor.

 

Park Tudor, one of 53 applicants to the Challenge, was awarded the Master’s Certification based on our work on environmental stewardship, social responsibility, waste reduction, and conservation of resources. Some of the programs highlighted in the application included: Environmental Science students’ honeybee talks with our kindergarten classes, the Lower School chickens, as well as its rainwater collecting bins, the combined Middle School/Upper School community gardens, which include annual soil testing, crop rotation, and alternatives to pesticides. Also listed were the Monarch Butterfly Study, Environmental Science class Plarn Wars (using plastic bags to create mates for homeless shelters), campus-wide recycling bins and water-filling stations, and the replacement of traditional light bulbs with LED bulbs.

 

One of the three pillars of our Strategic Plan, PT2020 Reimagined, is Community. That encompasses many things, including building community within our school, but also examining how Park Tudor can contribute in a meaningful way to the larger world of Indianapolis and beyond. Certainly, finding ways to be a responsible steward of our environment and becoming more sustainable is an important way that we can be a responsible member of the community. It is also an opportunity to model community engagement for our students and embody our core values of responsibility, resourcefulness and respect.