New Haven Independent

Someone probably put it there, said Alexis Wilcox [pictured in the orange vest]. This week students at Common Ground High School picked it up, along with buckets of smaller trash and recyclables.

It was all part of the Springside Avenue cleanup, a schoolwide project that puts students on the street to collect litter polluting the 1,500-acre park that surrounds their school.

Ashly Santana [pictured], a junior at Common Ground, said she used to pick up trash along the road on her own free time with a group of friends “because it’s our property, and we just wanted a better environment.”

“Me and Alexis [Wilcox] were really cool and used to chill all the time freshman year,” Santana said. “So we used to just do this without any of the tools.”

Wilcox, one of the school’s founders, encouraged Santana to write a grant for litter removal gear.

Two and a half years ago they were given $300 from the Student Activist Learning Fund. Now the Springside Avenue cleanups — and the classroom activities that follow — happen twice a week from November to April. [Wilcox is in the center of the photo, with Saquan Williams, handing out the equipment bought with that money.]

This exercise was not unlike many of the lessons at Common Ground High School, Wilcox said, where students do about half of their learning with their hands.

When they went back inside, students talked about the trash they just picked up: bottles, car parts, scrap metal, clothing, rubber, wax paper cups, to name just a few items.

“So, how did this stuff get here?” Wilcox asked the class.

“The people who pass by there,” Santana said.

Wilcox said some of the litter was probably thrown out of moving vehicles. Other items, such as the bed of a truck and a rubber mat, were probably dumped illegally. Further down Springside Avenue, piles of garbage bags sit in the woods along the road.

Smaller items, such as soda tops and Dixie cups, were probably left there by students waiting for the bus, Wilcox said.

And the beer bottles?

“I think people be there at night, just chillin’,” one student said.

Wilcox asked how many students had been in a park after it was closed. Most of the students raised their hands.

“Aside from just not littering, what can you do about this stuff? Not just here, but in your community?” Wilcox asked.

Santana raised her hand just before the bell rang. “Encourage other people not to trash the community you live in,” she said.