Tech students give back to community

LYNN – Lynn Vocational Technical Institute students stuck close to home but still managed to reach out into the community this week when they held their annual school-wide day of service.”We have 450 pieces of wood that the kids cut, sanded and stained, and they did it all this week,” said English teacher Jason McCuish, who spearheads the event. “It was crazy because it’s also finals this week.”Juniors, sophomores and freshmen came together Thursday morning with cheers and chatter, picked up assignments and got to work.Junior Kevin Gomes, who helped organize the event, said there were a number of projects to tackle including rebuilding 30 park benches and scraping, painting, repairing and welding the railing along the Lynn Commons as well as painting the MBTA wall that runs behind the school and raking, weeding, mulching and picking up trash around the school.”There is also the (traffic) island across the street,” McCuish added. “It has sort of become a homeless hotspot so we thought we’d reclaim it.”Students got a surprise when they stripped wood from the benches on the island. McCuish said they thought it would have to be replaced but after sanding down a few pieces they discovered it was mahogany.”They put a gloss on it and used it to rebuild the benches,” he said. “They look great.”Department of Public Works employees dropped piles of wooden slats for the carpentry shop students who rebuilt the benches along lower portion of the Commons.McCuish said they were inspired to do work on the Commons by the work the city is doing rebuilding the bandstand.Carpentry students quickly got into a groove with the benches while Jennifer Delacruz waited patiently for the welding equipment supplied by the DPW to show up. She said she liked the day because she liked doing something for the community.McCuish said they were also hoping to help out the YMCA by painting the MBTA wall that runs behind it as well.Barry McCaul’s auto collision repair students grabbed buckets of industrial paint and hit the wall with long handled rollers.”They’re workers, I’ll say that for all my grade levels, they’re hard workers,” he said.Armando Jimenez, a 10th-grader, said the painting was easy but he had an advantage: “I do this for a living. My father owns his own painting company.”Junior Tania Ortiz said she enjoyed the day of service.”I like how everyone works together to paint and to do things for the community,” she said. “It’s good memories.”As students headed out front to rake, mulch and plant flowers, history teacher Kathy Pieroni reminded students that they could play music, chat and have fun but they needed to take the work seriously.”We’re trying to make the school beautiful because you should be proud of where you go to school,” she said.Culinary Arts teacher Joseph Skeadas said his students handed out water and lemonade to workers making sure everyone stayed hydrated.McCuish praised the DPW and the fire department for helping to make the day run smoothly.”We couldn’t have done this without them,” McCuish said.Gomes said most of the students participated in the project in one way or another. When asked if he thought they would get it all done in one morning, he shrugged.”I think so. With 600 kids anything is possible,” Gomes said.