Weeds Growing Wild On Sacramento City Unified School District Campuses
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Some Sacramento City Unified School District school grounds have become overgrown with giant weeds since the governor issued the stay-at-home order over coronavirus fears last month.
At Alice Birney Elementary School in South Land Park, the basketball courts are now hidden and the play structures are surrounded by knee-high weeds.
Heath Dalrymple lives across the street.
"Super overgrown," Dalrymple said. "I haven't seen a mower or anyone out there for four, five, six weeks."
And this campus is not alone.
Eric Schranz became so fed up with the neglected grounds at Caleb Greenwood Elementary School, he helped assemble a group of vigilante gardeners to take down the tall grass, until the principal discovered the plan, and put a stop to it Wednesday night.
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"Busted by the principal," Schranz said. "It's been painful to watch it just fall into disrepair over the past six weeks."
The school district brought out a crew with mowers to get the job done Thursday morning.
The district maintains 104 campuses, and none of them were mowed for the first weeks of California's stay-at-home order.
Since then, scaled-down crews have been playing catch up, with some sites still growing wild six weeks later.
Nathaniel Browning is the School District interim director of facilities.
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"It's all uncharted," Browing said. "Because of the taller grass, we are experiencing maintenance issues with the mowers. It's taking a little bit longer. We're breaking belts and pieces like spindles that require special ordering and fixing."
The Sacramento City Unified School year may have shortened, but their school-grounds grass has grown as long as ever.
"Would just love to see it cleaned up," Dalrymple said.
The facilities director says they do hope to be caught up on all of their sites within the next couple of weeks.