VAN NUYS : Cleanup Day Planned at Elementary School

Hoping to bring together a neighborhood still hurting from the Northridge earthquake, Bassett Street School in Van Nuys has organized a cleanup of its quake-damaged elementary campus.

“We need a feeling of community,” said Sue Michiels, a kindergarten teacher at the school who came up with the idea of holding a community day Saturday. Students, faculty, parents and neighbors will get together at 9 a.m. for three hours of painting, preparing walls for murals, planting flowers and sprucing up the campus.

The campus still has damage from the Jan. 17 quake and about 25 apartment buildings in the neighborhood are still closed, Michiels said.

She does not expect that all the work that needs to be done will be completed in one morning, Michiels said. “Obviously, this is the first of many days we will have.”

The morning’s work will conclude with a potluck lunch.

She said she hoped that having parents involved in the project would show children how important an education is to them.

Saturday’s work will include cleaning and painting furniture that has been donated to the school, putting other items in storage and taking care of work the school cannot handle during a regular working day.

“We are in desperate need of flower seeds and plants,” Michiels said.

Anyone who has tools or muscles to donate to the effort is welcome, Michiels said. The school is at 15756 Bassett St. Michiels can be reached at (818) 782-1340.

Working with the school in the cleanup effort will be the Woodcraft Rangers, Americorps VISTA volunteers and teen-agers from the California Conservation Corps, which is part of the Earthquake Response Volunteer Network started last month by President Clinton’s Corporation for National Service.