Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Safety Town, which is a program at Starr Elementary that helps teach four and five-year-old children safety lessons, is getting a full rebuild thanks to generous help from the community, including construction from Clay High School students.
The program gives hands-on safety learning lessons to young children in areas such as water, railroad, poison, pedestrian, bike, and bus safety, as well as stranger danger and 911.
Deb Kowalski, who has been the program coordinator for Safety Town in Oregon for the past 20 years, said they try to incorporate many things to help the future generation be safe. She is one of the people responsible for coordinating lessons.
“It’s been a blessing,” she said. “My grandson has already been through it. My granddaughter is coming this year, so not only have my children been part of Safety Town being students, but they also were volunteers and then now my grandchildren. We take a lot of pride in this. Our community takes great pride in providing a service to help teach our children how to be safe.”
Drew Lashaway, a former star wrestler at Eastwood High School, now teaches a construction course at Clay High School, where his students have been responsible for rebuilding the site.
“There’s 20 structures we’ve built in a matter of eight days so far,” he said. “In the matter of six days, we had the full structures up. Now we’re finalizing the siding and trim work, and we’re going to start roofing next week.”
Initially, the thought was to remodel or renovate, but rot was discovered and through the help of organizations like the Oregonian Club, a full rebuild was financed. Those preliminary plans started around a month ago.
“The rotten wood was on the external part,” Lashaway said. “When we dug deeper, it was rotten from the ground up, so all the base platforms and base plates were all rotten. We had to initially go and come back like a change order on the job site, which is good for these guys to understand because it happens all the time in the field. Then we started constructing and re-planning for the major demo and rebuild.”
Lashaway said approximately 35 kids per day are rotating in and helping with the construction. They will earn industry credentials and state certifications in the curriculum his class teaches, also referred to a Career Connections.
He said juniors come in the mornings, do smaller odds and ends for the project, and then the seniors come out. They're constructing the rafters, the roofs, and the more major skill sets that they learn as they go through his course.
“Career Connections is basically the carpenter's local,” he said. “That's the curriculum that I use as my base and then we expand off of that, and we teach them all trade skills, kind of introduce them, and get them acclimated to any trade they want to go into. This isn't limited to just carpentry. This is a jack of all trades course.”
One of those students, Alex Goetz, was part of SkillsUSA, where he ended up placing fourth in regional competition and qualified for the state tournament.
Goetz, who has a career goal to be an electrician or maybe a carpenter, is one of the more skilled kids in the class per Lashaway.
“It's amazing just learning all the different ways of doing things,” Goetz said. “It’s setting us up for a good future. A lot of this stuff is really good for home repairs in general, but it’s also good for your career. It's just something I didn't know I could do and just be good at it.”
Fellow senior Logan Koehler’s goal is to get into iron work at the Local 55, and while this project isn’t that, it helps him get there.
“It’s been really fun getting to learn all the ins and outs of building tiny houses,” he said. “It helps set ourselves up for the future. Plus, when we drive past this in the future, we can tell that we built this, that we know we built all of this. It’s nice to know that this helps the community a lot.”
In addition to Kowalski and the Clay students, members of the Oregonian Club, the fire department, and the police department have all helped make this project happen.
“I can’t stress enough how much this project means to not only the school but our community as well,” Oregon’s assistant fire chief Mark Mullins said. “This gives students real-life construction knowledge that includes estimating, purchasing, time management, and supervisor skills that will carry on with them as they graduate and become part of the workforce with real hands-on experience. These kids deserve all the credit for this extraordinary work they’re doing for their community without asking for anything in return.”
Mike Podanny, who initially worked for the police department and was the officer at Safety Town for 15 years, is now the lead trustee on this project with the Oregonian Club.
“They got here, started opening up buildings, and realized it would be better off (doing a complete rebuild). It's a much better project for the Clay kids to do this. They're doing a tremendous job in a small window of time because initially we thought this would be a repair or restore and now they’re redoing it. We're on a rebuild, which is good. We just have a small window to get in.”
Podanny, who said he believes Oregon’s Safety Town is the primo version in the Northwest Ohio area, considers himself the answer man in terms of answering things such as where is this, where is that, can we do this, can we do that? Mixed in with his personal history with Safety Town, he knows just how important this project is for the community.
“Early child safety is really, really important,” he said. “These are kids just going into kindergarten. Traditionally, we used to do things like their first ride on a school bus as part of Safety Town, a visit to the fire station, a visit to the police department, and to introduce fire and police as safety helpers for the kids. Even being on the bus that one time with the teacher and stuff was always great because that kid's going to be getting on a bus in two weeks and going to school.”
Safety Town began several decades ago, and it is estimated the existing buildings had probably been up 25-30 years old.
“Our schools provide learning,” Kowalski said. “Our police department and our fire department provide needs and support, but we also want the children to know those are their safety friends. It takes money, it takes time and energy, and we've been talking about this collaboration for at least five years now. We have really been working on putting it together. It's been quite an effort and it's been a long time coming.”
Safety Town, which also involves park rangers helping with water safety, runs the first two weeks of June from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., with approximately 120-130 students each year not just from Oregon, but also from Northwood, Genoa, Lake, Sylvania, and Toledo.
“Our Safety Town is valued because it is a community, but it's also memories,” Kowalski said. “Many of our Safety Town teams that volunteer their time went to Safety Town, and when we do graduation, many of the parents of our Safety Town students also participated themselves. It's a lifelong memory, and the collaboration between the school district and the city and the Oregonian Club, it's valued beyond measurement because our families that went here come back. I've had grandparents who live in our community whose grandchildren are all the way from Florida and North Carolina that will have their grandchildren for that week just to be a part of our Safety Town.”
For Lashaway, being able to contribute to something like this means a lot.
“It's so impactful. These kids, they get to drive past this the rest of their lives and say, 'I built that. I helped with that project.’ They can take pride in their work, just like any other construction project for anybody that's in the field,” he said. “We've also had community members stop out every other day, as well as Oregonian Club members and school board members and everybody. That to me is why I teach. That's why I do all this mentorship for kids. It's because the community that's involved, the kids that get to see that, and the pride they carry with the project or anything that helps the community out.”
