In recent weeks, volunteers from Lowe's Home Improvement and Winston-Salem artist Jennifer O'Kelly have transformed the buildings and campus at Cook Elementary School.
By the main entrance, Lowe's volunteers made a sundial courtyard. They placed colorful metal butterflies, dragonflies and lady bugs on the trunks of nearby trees. Flowers grow in newly landscaped areas. Buildings are enlivened by such touches as new carpeting and poles and doors painted an inviting blue.
Out back, picnic tables sit by a beach mural that O'Kelly and her assistant, Naomi Greenberg, painted. On another building, O'Kelly and another assistant, Jessica Holcomb, painted a "follow your dreams" mural with a friendly sun gazing down on a rainbow, an airplane and a hot-air balloon.
That mural is on the building in which Velvet McGregor teaches fourth-graders. When she has a minute, she likes to go out and sit by it.
"That, to me, is the most welcoming part," McGregor said.
Usually, O'Kelly designs and paints theater sets and commercial and residential murals. These were the first school murals she has done.
"I feel like arts education starts by seeing art," O'Kelly said. "I hope it opens up the possibilities for them."
The spiffed-up surroundings have given teachers and students alike a new sense of pride and enthusiasm, said Cook's principal, Ted Burcaw. "It's injected a whole new energy and enthusiasm that has lifted everybody's spirits."
There's far more to this project than paint, carpet and a sundial. The Lowe's Charitable and Education Foundation gave Cook a $100,000 grant, and 80 percent of the money is going to such technology as interactive whiteboards.
Due to arrive in the next few weeks, it's technology that can be found at new schools in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system. The technology has Bert Barber, the manager of the Lowe's off Peters Creek Parkway, even more excited than he was about the cosmetic improvements.
In the weeks after the grant was announced on July 15, about 30 volunteers from the three Winston-Salem Lowe's stores worked on the project, Barber said.
"The Smart Boards have got me fired up," Barber said.
Cook has great students, Burcaw said.
"Our students are bright," he said. "Our students are eager to learn."
But they face challenges, Burcaw said. When it comes to family income, Cook is at the bottom of the school system, and almost all of its 260 students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
Technology isn't the magic answer, but it can provide tools to fill in gaps, he said. "It is going to give us an advantage."
The volunteer efforts were separate from the grant. "The volunteer hours allowed us to do a lot more with the money," Burcaw said.
Barber documented more than 600 hours and he says he didn't count all of them.
Joy B. Simmons, Lowe's regional manager, oversaw the project.
"When she came in, she came in like gangbusters," said Mark Southern, the school's technical facilitator and the man at the school who made the connection with Lowe's. Simmons said that she couldn't have asked for a better group of volunteers and that people came up with idea after idea.
"It was just awesome," she said.
Southern said he knows it's tricky to talk about God's plan, but he felt as if that was what happened here.
"It was meant to be," he said. "There was a bigger plan."
Lowe's volunteers went a giant step further than fixing up the campus by deciding, before school started, to give each student two outfits and a new pair of shoes. They sent cards to the students' homes asking for clothing and shoe sizes. Parents were invited to pick up the clothing at the school's open house. There, Barber said, parents told them all evening long how much they appreciated what the Lowe's people had done.
"It was a neat feeling," he said. "That group was very, very grateful, and that made it fun to do."
Greg Gee, the manager at the Lowe's on University Parkway, said that his favorite part of the project was watching every single child walk into school the first day wearing a brand-new pair of shoes.
"It was about the children," he said.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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