Tuesday
Texas Motor Speedway Employees Dig in to Help Fort Worth School Refurbish Educational Garden
Press Release• TMS Renovates Garden, Donates 10 Mature Trees To Rosemont 6th Grade School As Part Of Speedway’s Speeding To Help Community Outreach Program
• Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief Pays A Special Visit To The School Project
Texas Motor Speedway sent more than two dozen employees to refurbish the Fort Worth school’s education garden as well as donate 10 mature trees from NASCAR’s Green Clean Air program as part of the speedway’s Speeding To Help community outreach program.
Texas Motor Speedway employees joined more than 100 Rosemont students as they helped in the major renovation of the school’s education garden designed by REAL School Gardens. Volunteers assisted in the overhaul of the garden by designing and building vegetable beds; constructing a special butterfly garden for perennial flowers; building three arbors to serve as entrance areas to the garden; helped improve the garden’s erosion bed and created a new compost area.
“We are so extremely grateful and thankful to everybody who has participated in this project and to help make this a reality,” Rosemont Principal Kenneth Goodwin said. “We so much appreciate all the love and support that continues to come forth. This has been a labor of love for our teachers and this whole community. The garden is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, point of pride for us all, beyond the many years of recognition that we have under our belt.”
To help celebrate the renovation of Rosemont School’s garden, Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief paid a special visit to the school and assisted in the ceremonial planting of the final tree with representatives from Texas Motor Speedway, NASCAR, Real School Gardens and the Rosemont students. Moncrief encouraged students to value to learning opportunity the garden will provide them now and in the future.
“Every single one of you is important to our future; the future mayor of Fort Worth could be standing right here,” Moncrief told the students. “Our young people look for role models and the people that are out here today obviously care about you or they wouldn’t be here. I hope that you have learned something from this project and that you continue to wake up every single morning determined to learn something.”
The trees were donated as part of NASCAR’s initiative to capture the carbon emissions produced by racing in local communities such as Fort Worth, home of Texas Motor Speedway. NASCAR established the Green Clean Air program and as part of the program, the sanctioning body donated 10 trees to Texas Motor Speedway for every time the green flag waved during April’s Samsung Mobile 500. With seven caution periods and the green flag to start the race, Texas Motor Speedway received 80 trees, with 10 earmarked this REAL School Gardens project.
“This is a program we do across the racing circuit in communities just like this all across the country where we have race tracks,” NASCAR Managing Director of Green Innovation Mike Lynch said. “We are delighted to be doing this with Texas Motor Speedway, Rosemont 6th Grade School and REAL School Gardens, and we look forward to doing it again in the future.”
REAL School Gardens, a local nonprofit, works with Rosemont 6th Grade School and other North Texas elementary schools to create gardens that enhance the learning education of children. Educators utilize the garden as an outdoor classroom, presenting various math lessons to students. REAL School Gardens not only provides gardens for area schools, but also maintains the gardens year round.
Since developing its first garden at Rosemont, the organization has gone on to work with 74 elementary schools in five urban school districts, ensuring that more than 41,000 children and 2,600 educators have daily access to nature through school gardens in North Texas.
Texas Motor Speedway has continued to serve area organizations during its Speeding To Help community outreach program. The program traditionally assists community outreach programs for four consecutive weeks during the summer months, but the initial visit to Rosemont on Sept. 2 was rained out and rescheduled for this date due to the tree planting seasons.
“This project was extremely important to the school and we were determined that we would find a suitable date to help Rosemont refurbish this educational garden,” Texas Motor Speedway Vice President of Media Relations Mike Zizzo said. “It would not have been possible without the skilled talent we possess in our Operations Department as well as the partnership forged with REAL School Gardens and NASCAR on this project. Every one of us that participated today is very proud to give back to our community, and it was a great honor to have Mayor Moncrief pay a special visit and thank all of us for volunteering to help our community.”
Earlier this year Texas Motor Speedway volunteers helped Christian Community Action in Lewisville with its “Back-to-School” store and also joined forces with the City of Fort Worth’s Graffiti Abatement Program to paint a race-themed mural over graffiti in the Fort Worth community. In the previous two years, Texas Motor Speedway’s Speeding To Help program also has provided assistance to the United Service Organization (USO) of Dallas/Fort Worth, Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, Habitat for Humanity, Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth, Homes For Our Troops, United Community Centers, Inc. of Fort Worth, North Texas Food Bank and Dallas Arboretum.
- Texas Motor Speedway, Press Release
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