The City of Burien received a $152,000 grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology to adapt that curriculum into StormFest, a two-day event for Highline School District.
“We took the classroom lessons and objectives, and we used them in each station at the festival,” Eidmann said.
She said that Highline jumped at the opportunity—and the cities in the district partnered in making the festival possible. The City of Des Moines donated the park and staff. Normandy Park, SeaTac and King County also joined in the effort.
Burien brought in a consultant to analyze the best way to make the course appropriate for the various multicultural backgrounds of Highline students. As a result, the event included 17 on-site interpreters. All of the surveys and take-home materials for students are also translated into different languages so they can be shared with the whole family.
Eidmann said that surveys will be used to measure how successful the event was.
Her goal was for students walk away with new knowledge about the environment. “We want them to understand what stormwater is and how they contribute to it each and every day in their lives,” she said. “This empowers them to make a difference.”
Giving students tools to reduce stormwater pollution was a key part of the session, Elyssa Kerr, a naturalist with the Environmental Science Center, said.
The nonprofit dedicated to nature education and preservation, located in 2220 SW Seahurst Park Rd. in Burien, helped develop the curriculum for the festival.
“We want them to know what specifically you can do as a 6thgrader,” Kerr said. “They walk away with an action they can take, something they can do, a concrete thing. And at the end they take a pledge that moving forward they will be part of those actions in their homes and community.”