Sheldon School Board to help fund greenhouse

Nevada Daily Mail

The Sheldon School board voted unanimously to approve paying for a new greenhouse for the agricultural department during its meeting Wednesday night.

Ryan Meeks, agriculture teacher at Sheldon, said he did not think the new greenhouse would need to be as big as the previous one.

"It's going to be a 22 by 30 foot greenhouse," Meeks said. "Quite a bit smaller than the 50 by 24 we had last time. I don't think we need that much space or propane to heat it up or energy to keep it up."

The new green house will be a hard shell greenhouse. Meeks explained this means there will be no need to replace plastic every three years. Instead, Meeks said the greenhouse shouldn't need new plastic for 15 years.

"It should last a lot longer," he said. "Pretty simple."

While the cost for the new greenhouse is about $41,000, Sheldon has a grant paying up to 75 percent of the cost of the structure and 50 percent of the cost of labor. Meeks said an additional $8,500 would need to be spent for labor, leaving Sheldon with $14,500 to spend. Meeks told the school board, the district sold the old greenhouse for $2,500, and he has a savings account of about $4,500. This $7,000 will go towards the purchase of the new greenhouse. He asked the school board to help pay the remaining $7,500.

"I think that after all the work we have done, $7,500 is not much to get out nearly $50,000 out of a greenhouse," Meeks said.

Meeks said he would use the greenhouse to teach middle school students and high school students who want to take a greenhouse class.

"We have a spring plant sale, and you know, that will be all hands on deck," he said. "All kids no matter what class they're in are going to get a chance to use it."

Board member Gene Leininger suggested that some of the money spent on the new greenhouse would make itself back with plant sales and potential educational success.

"Some people would have a problem with it if there's only three or four kids using it, then we have a problem. But if it's George Washington Carver, then yeah, there's no doubt. We get some kid that really gets that interest then we want to support that," he said.

Jared Lamb, school board secretary, concurred, "We've got to give [Meeks] the tools to succeed to do the best job."

The members of the school board passed Jared Lamb's motion to spend $7,500 from the school's general fund for the greenhouse, unanimously.

Sheldon High School principal Jason Irwin told the board that parent teacher conferences would start next Wednesday. He also told the board the combined junior high school girl's basketball team is currently 8-0.