Have you ever wondered, why does our school look bare? Where are the trees? What happened to our greens? Most importantly, why is there so much trash around campus? Believe it or not, this all begins with us, the students. 

I talked to different students that have attended Edison in the past years and had all wondered what happened to the tree in front of the W building. This tree was a huge tree by a yellow bench which many students at lunch would hang out at and suddenly, it’s gone.

I interviewed Daniel Hernandez, EHS Plant Manager of our campus who oversees the scenery of our school, and asked him the questions that students have had. Hernandez said the reason the tree was cut down was because of the berries falling off the tree and creating a mess all over the campus grounds.

He said a new tree to be planted was requested by Fresno Unified, but they failed to follow up on if they were going to help or fund for a new tree to be planted.

It was despairing to hear this information as without their funds or help, it’ll be hard for us to plant a new tree on our own without the proper knowledge of planting a tree and having it flourish for years ongoing.  We as students must use our voices if we want more shade and greens around our school to make it beautiful again.

Leaving aside how our district is at fault, students are also equally at fault for the way our environment is starting to look. I asked Hernandez if there were any possible approaches we can take to prevent the trash from being thrown in flower beds and bushes, dismayed, there isn’t much we can do rather it’s more on the individuals that trash our school.

We can do better. The most we can do to help is clean up after ourselves and trash laying on the ground. Picking up trash takes no longer than ten seconds plus you’re helping our environment and letting our plants flourish. On the bright side, Hernandez stated that new trees have been planted around the baseball field and custodians had done a good job at planting new flowers and bushes around the R buildings. So please, look around occasionally, and feel grateful for our beautiful plants!