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Olivia Price stands with her father, Walter Price, next to new hooks installed as part of her Girl Scout Gold Award Project.
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As part of her Girl Scout Gold Award Project, Olivia Price created a safe haven for backpacks and belongings at Burton Valley and Happy Valley Elementary schools. With her team, she installed 36 plastic hooks outside of the science and computer center, 33 plastic hooks outside of the library, and 26 hooks outside of the gym at Happy Valley and she removed 241 metal hooks from outside 10 classrooms at Burton Valley, replacing them with virtually indestructible polycarbonate plastic hooks.
At Happy Valley, Price and her team sanded, primed, and painted each individual board. "Then we used a measuring tape to measure the length of the boards, deciding how many hooks we could put on each," Price said. They removed the protective tape that was on both sides of each individual hook and screwed in each hook, making sure every one was squared to the board. "Afterwards, we screwed the boards into the outside of the buildings, making sure that each board was level and at the proper height."
At Burton Valley, Price and her team removed the metal hooks from boards, unscrewing two screws per hook and pulling the hooks off the boards and used scrapers to scrape off the glue that "stuck" the hook to the wall. They filled holes with putty and sanded down the boards before painting two for each classroom. Using requirements from the school's head of maintenance, they measured out where each hook would go on the board, trying to fit as many hooks as possible. "We marked the numbers 1-30 under each hook so each student could find their hook and remember their backpack's position," Price said. The hooks had been cut by the school district maintenance staff from old windows that had been replaced in the school system. Finally, they screwed in the plastic hooks with electric cordless drills and special bits for the screw heads, screwing in a total of 279 hooks over many days.
"I did this project because the metal hooks at Burton Valley were unsafe," said Price. "They stuck out and were breaking. High school students apparently would hit them with baseball bats causing them to break. At Happy Valley I installed these hooks so that the students would no longer simply throw their backpacks on the ground, which could easily become a walking hazard."
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA