Ellender High to build outdoor learning pavilion with Lowe’s $100,000 donation

Calling it a “win-win” for the community and public education, Ellender High School Principal Marilyn Schwartz is all smiles following Lowe’s decision to award a $100,000 grant to one of Houma’s eastside high schools.

“We feel privileged that Lowe’s would put that kind of corporate support into our school … it says something about who we are,” Schwartz said.

Aware that Lowe’s awards grants to schools and other civic organizations, Ellender High applied earlier this year for the gift.

“This is just one example, although it is a great one, of how the community can show support for public education … it’s a win-win for everyone,” Schwartz said.

The principal said the money will be used to create, among other things, an outdoor learning pavilion, to buy outdoor furniture and to renovate a grass area between two portable classrooms.

Van Mansker, Lowe’s Human Resources director, said he was impressed with Ellender partly because of its “multi-cultural student population.”

“We try to give back to all the communities we’re located in, as much as we can,” he said. “We wanted to get more involved in the Terrebonne Parish area, and while we were working with Jerome Boykin, the president of the NAACP there, he steered me to Ellender High School. That’s when I made their principal aware of our grant programs.

“These kinds of donations are simply just the right thing to do,” Mansker added.

Boykin said he is simply “taken back” by the response Mansker and Lowe’s has given the school projects.

“Lowe’s regularly gives $5 million to schools across the country, on an annual basis,” Boykin said. “And it’s stunning that we here in Terrebonne Parish got a piece of that.

“But now, they’re going further. Lowe’s has committed to be a major sponsor at the NAACP scholarship banquet. Now that’s what I call planting deep roots in a community,” he said.