(Sherburn, Mn.)– MCW was the recent recipient of a $10,000 grant from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation. MCW Ag Instructor Steph Wohlhuter, who wrote the grant with some assistance from Sherburn City officials, talks about what the grant will be used for…
“It’s for an outdoor classroom and walking path area to the west of the school building. So there’s currently a few acres out there right now that are already native prairie, and that’s pretty much going to be left untouched. Through the referendum money there will be a walking path kind of put through that prairie, but that’s kind of where the project ended as far as that was concerned. So I put money in this grant to get several really high quality benches that are going to be out there. And kind of the neat part about it is, you know, we’ve had some trees planted on the high school grounds over the years in memory of different people and it’s hard to take those trees down and not be able to honor those people. But I think we’re going to be able to do that through these benches out there. So that’s kind of a neat transition piece to make sure those people aren’t forgotten.“
Wohlhuter says it’s important to the school district to create an outdoor space that is useful not only to MCW classes but to the entire MCW community…
“We’re really trying to create that whole space to be useful to classes. So the native prairie area, there can be plant identification, soil testing, you know, there’s a whole bunch of things we could do out there. And then there’s going to be a retention pond right next to it. So we had to have two different ponds on the property as part of this project. The one that’s out by the prairie is going to be dug deeper and it’s going to be a fishing pond, kind of modeled after Maple River schools. They have something similar but my wildlife management classes are going to do the research on stocking the fish, monitoring populations, monitoring water quality and then it’ll be something that all the community members can come in and enjoy. If they want to be able to go fishing at night on on the weekend you know it’ll be available and there’ll be a dock out there and all that kind of stuff. So the goal is, in my mind, how do we make this school usable to our entire community. They’re all supporting it and paying taxes for it. How can it be useful to all of them?”
Work on the new school started earlier this year and is expected to be open for the 2027-28 school year.
