For Pentucket students, the coming of springtime brings about an all too familiar sound: the thunderous noise of a lawn mower outside of classrooms windows. Whether taking a test or participating in a class discussion, teachers and students are frustrated by this unnecessary distraction.

In the past few weeks, the Pentucket journalism team has been fighting for reform in the lawn mowing system. On May 11th at 2:05 PM, Pentucket juniors Daniel DiCamillo and Julia Wright initiated a brief interview with two of Pentucket’s professional landscapers. The field experts told our team to contact Mr. Greg Hadden, Pentucket’s own facilities manager.

In the next step of the investigation, Pentucket sophomore Melanie Adams sent an email message to Mr. Greg Hadden inquiring about the lawn mowing. The email asked if there was a specific reason why the lawns were mowed midday as opposed to after school hours.

Mr. Hadden politely responded 31 minutes later, explaining the various tasks which the ground technicians must accomplish each week. Their crew consists of only 2 full time workers, 2 part time workers for facilities and related work, an occasional contractor, and Mr. Hadden. However, this small group has enormous responsibilities at our school.

“We have full facility and ground responsibility for Page, Bagnall, HS, and MS Campus, and only facility responsibility for Donaghue and Sweetsir,” Mr. Hadden states.

These workers work from 7 am to 3:30 pm every Monday through Friday, and they also occasionally work later or on the weekends to resolve issues.

As for the lawn mowing, “There are many factors on when we can work in an outside area: the need, the rate of growth, the recent weather and predicted forecast, the general access, MCAS testing, available staffing, upcoming event preparations, after school use of areas, etc., and there are only so many work hours in a given day,” explains Mr. Hadden.

In other words, the lawn crew workers are busy bees, and lawn mowing is one small task out of the multitude of jobs which must be done to keep our campus clean and well-kept. In addition, the workers must partake in a new extensive program to properly maintain Pentucket’s new luscious sports fields. All of the outdoor work must be done at specific times throughout the week due to soil aeration, fertilization, seeding, irrigation, and soil testing.

“In working to maintain the timing of the campus field program, we fill time gaps with smaller jobs like mowing the campus and other school common areas,” Mr. Hadden says.

In conclusion, it seems as though the Pentucket professional lawn technicians have so much time-oriented work to do in a given week that they are unable to mow the lawn after 2:15. For the time being, it’s a good idea to bring some studio headphones to school in order to block out that wonderfully distracting seasonal sound.