Flora Ridge Elementary gets free trees from tourism group

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Flora Ridge Elementary gets free trees from tourism group

Around Osceola

Wednesday, 03 November 2010 00:00

By Brian McBride
Associate Editor
Things got a little shady at Flora Ridge Elementary School in Kissimmee last week.
As a recipient of the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association’s Adopt a School program, the school Oct. 26 received 30 free 14- to 16-foot trees, a mix of laurel, live and maple oaks. They will provide the much-needed shade for the school student play area, Principal Debra Neill said.
“This is Florida and it’s hot,” she said.
The school was chosen from a list of school projects by the association’s Allied Relations Council during a recent meeting it had.
“We found out this poor school has no shade,” Nick Romeo, outgoing council chairman, said.
Romeo said council members just started rambling off resources they could provide to make the project happen.
“Literally in one meeting it just happened,” Romeo said.
Wolf Irrigation and Landscape of St. Cloud was tapped to plant the trees. A two-man company team worked diligently, pulling the large trees off a flatbed truck before the planting began. The entire stock of trees were worth about $6,000, Kevin Wolf, owner of the landscaping company, said. It was a service he was more than willing to provide.
“I grew up here,” he said. “It’s just giving back to the community.”
At first, Neill thought the school would only be getting enough trees to shade the school picnic tables.
“This far exceeded my expectations,” she said.
The Allied Relations Council is designed to support the association’s hotel and lodging supplier membership that does business with hospitality and tourism businesses to enhance the mission and goals of the overall association, while ensuring that association effectively responds to needs of the suppliers.
The association membership includes nearly 90 percent of the more than 115,000 hotel rooms in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties, and more than 450 supplier organizations, according to the association website.
The Adopt-A-School program began in 2002 with the mission to identify, develop and promote positive community partnerships between every public school in Central Florida and association membership. Since that time, more than 70 partnerships have flourished under this program in cooperation with Orange, Osceola and Seminole county school districts.
“This is just one of our community projects we do as an organization,” Jennifer McAfee, director of convention and council services, said.