DIXFIELD — Buckfield Junior-Senior High School has received a $1,000 grant to design and build compost bins for waste from the cafeteria and school garden.

“It’s a great opportunity to have a hands-on experience and apply the things they’ve learned in the classroom,” Principal George Reuter said. “The grant was to define a problem, then solve it. This is a real-life experience.”

Lots of food waste comes from the cafeteria, said Allie Burke, Western Foothills Kids Association Afterschool Program director. The compost bins will address that problem as well as the garden waste, she said. Students will learn how compost breaks down and how to build the wooden bins,” she said. “They will also learn how much food waste is created.”

The compost will eventually feed the school garden.

“This all goes with the greening of the school. Dirt creates meals,” Burke said.

The project will likely begin in early spring.

The school is one of seven in the state to receive a Service Learning Award from the Maine Commission for Community Service. The grant will pay for students in grades seven to nine to design and build three 4- by 4-foot compost bins and teach the school and community the importance of composting and sustainability. They will use fliers, signs and other means to get their message out.

Burke discovered the grant opportunity and asked the four schools under her program to submit ideas. They include Meroby Elementary School in Mexico, Rumford Elementary School and Dirigo Middle School in Dixfield. Burke and the Bryant Pond 4-H Learning Center wrote the grant application. Time Warner Cable also contributed to the award.

Annette Caldwell and Gretchen Kimball, site coordinators at the Buckfield after-school program, suggested that money for a composting program would be compatible with the one-acre school garden that supplies food to the cafeteria and is also sold to the public.

Burke said this is the first time she has heard of an educational grant that provided money for composting.

“But it fits perfectly;” she said.

She said she believes the school’s garden and compost project could be a model for other schools in the Western Foothills School District. Rumford Elementary School started a vegetable garden at Hosmer Field last season with the assistance of the River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition. A teacher at Mountain Valley Middle School in Mexico also started a vegetable garden with her seventh-grade science class.

Tentative plans are under way for other school gardens at the Meroby and Dirigo schools.

Also receiving a Service Learning Award was Jay Middle School for $4,000. It will pay for a geodesic dome greenhouse to be built by students in the Grade 8 Gifted and Talented program, other eighth-graders, local parents, volunteers and local builders.

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