Peoria Standard

Farmington Central High School teacher Ryan Lambert spoke during a board meeting to praise the Harvest program and various students.

“We started with a fairly small team completing about 20 projects the first year,” Lambert said during the meeting. “This past year we were able to complete over 96 projects across the community and the school, and that was done by 42 of our high school students.”

The Harvest Team was started in 2016 on a bus back from a conference with team adviser Lambert and a group of students. Lambert has taught at Farmington Central since 2010. He has helped the Harvest team program grow over its six years and has made it almost five times the size and scope of its first year.

The district’s Facebook page noted it’s a leader in giving students accessibility to using technology, such as having five computer labs.

The Harvest Team Student of the Year started two different projects for the team in the 2021-22 school year. Student Bailey Kennelly started the Rake and Run, going to the homes of those who are unable to get out or take care of their yards and rake and bag the leaves in the fall.

With difficult weather conditions, this project wasn’t as successful as they hoped for, so they did the same thing in a different form in the winter with the Shovel and Run project.

She completed the Harvest Team leadership dinner and award ceremony in the second semester. The event was completely organized by her and brought in school board members, parents, community leaders and teachers in order to recognize all the students of the team.

It was at this dinner that she was awarded the Student of the Year prize because of three anonymous nominations.

The next regular board meeting is at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 8, and can be viewed as a livestream on the district’s Farmington Central 265 YouTube channel.