Parents Trim School Lawns as Volunteers

Mowing the lawn is a routine chore for many Valley parents. But William Mally must be one of the few fathers who cuts the grass for 380 children.

Mally spends a few hours each week doing landscape work at Anatola Avenue Elementary School in Van Nuys, which, like most elementary schools, lost its gardening crew in July when the Los Angeles Unified School District laid off 60 gardeners because of the continuing budget crisis.

The burden fell on the daytime custodian. To get the job done, the district gave the schools lawn mowers and weed whackers, many of them not assembled.

Mally and a few other parents stepped in to help.

“I’ve got free time because I work nights,” said Mally, who has a son and daughter in the school. “I put in two to three hours a week helping out however I can.”

Another parent said trimming trees and cutting hedges is an easy way to volunteer.

“It’s a less threatening role for some parents,” said Bruce McCandless, who has two children attending Anatola. “It’s kind of another way for people to connect to their school.”

This is all fine with custodian Emile Zakkak.

“The principal didn’t want me to do it because I have a lot of work to do,” said Zakkak, who manages to mow the lawn when time allows. “These are good people. They help the school a lot.”

The district has gone from 500 gardeners in 1960 to 100 today, with more budget cuts anticipated, said Margaret Scholl, director of maintenance and operations.

“The schools, of course, are furious. And understandably so,” Scholl said. But Sylvia Kacher, one of the parents who has helped out, said she worries that a few parents can’t be expected to do the job forever.

“What it does is put the burden on a few and they just burn out after a while,” Kacher said. “If we could just get everyone to do two hours a semester, it would be great.”