PVSchools students to grow food in classrooms with new tower gardens

By Stacy Mantle
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Students at several Paradise Valley Unified School District schools will soon have the opportunity to grow food in their classrooms after the governing board approved a partnership to bring five vertical gardens to the district.

The board unanimously approved an agreement Sept. 17 with the Arizona Sustainability Alliance to participate in its Sow It Forward initiative, which provides indoor Tower Gardens to K-12 teachers at Title I schools in the Phoenix area.

Since launching in 2017, the program has partnered with more than 100 teachers and provided more than 7,500 students with opportunities to grow food while learning about agriculture, sustainability and business, according to Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Karen Benson.

Five openings remained in the program for the 2026-27 school year, and PVSchools was invited to participate.

Benson said the district reached out to STEAM teachers at its Title I schools to gauge interest and received responses from five teachers who expressed significant interest and were available for the required professional development.

The teachers are from Echo Mountain Primary, Echo Mountain Intermediate, Palomino Primary, Palomino Intermediate and the district's CREST program.

The gardens will provide project-based learning tied to Arizona academic standards and science and engineering practices.

Students will be able to investigate plant growth, collect and track data and troubleshoot problems with the garden systems.

“Students will have opportunities to work as real scientists and engineers,” Benson said.

At the elementary schools, the gardens are intended to reach students beyond the individual classrooms responsible for maintaining them.

“While our esteemed teachers will serve as the primary point of care for the Tower Gardens at each elementary school, the intent is for the gardens to be school-wide learning experiences,” Benson said.

Because all elementary students at the participating campuses take STEAM, Benson said students across grade levels could use the gardens to make connections to science and other areas of the curriculum.

PVSchools has gardening experience at some campuses, including Mercury Mine and Palomino Intermediate. Benson said the district's science curriculum and career and technical education teams will connect participating teachers with schools that have established garden programs.

Those schools can serve as mentors and share curriculum ideas, lessons learned and strategies for keeping the programs operating long term.

During the first year, the Sow It Forward program will provide the Tower Garden equipment and initial materials needed to operate them.

After the 2026-27 school year, PVSchools or participating schools would be responsible for ongoing costs if they choose to continue using the gardens. Those expenses include mineral nutrients, pH-adjustment materials, growing medium and seeds.

The district will take ownership and responsibility for the equipment but can move the gardens among classrooms, teachers or schools as participation changes. The equipment can be returned to the Arizona Sustainability Alliance if the district no longer wants to use it.

Governing board member Dr. Amanda Lim asked whether the gardens could also be used to encourage students at participating schools to become involved in science fairs.

“So, have we, at the district level, started to think about how we're going to engage those sites that now have these really exciting items to potentially get those students interested in doing science fair in the upcoming year or the year after that?” Lim asked.

Benson said district staff plan to have those discussions in the coming days.

Board members expressed support for connecting the new sites with schools that already have gardening experience before unanimously approving the agreement.

Editor’s note:   A grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation made this story possible. The foundation awarded 15 newsrooms to pay for solutions-focused education reporters for two years. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.

Stacy Mantle
Education Solutions Reporter

smantle@iniusa.org

Meet Stacy
Stacy Mantle is joining the team at Independent Newsmedia, Inc. as an Education Solutions journalist, thanks to a grant from the Arizona Community Collaborative. She has a long history in education that ranges from teaching junior high and middle school to developing curriculum and standards-based assessments.

Community: A longtime advocate for animal welfare, Stacy is deeply involved in rescue efforts and volunteers with several nonprofit organizations.

Random Fact: Once upon a time, she shared her home with a pet coyote and two wolf hybrids. The experiences were wild enough to become the subject of her first book!

Education: She holds a BA in English with a minor in Political Science, a Post-baccalaureate in Secondary Education, and an MBA with a emphasis on Marketing.

Hobbies: In her spare time, Stacy writes fast-paced urban fantasy novels, crafts small-batch artisan soap, and is always up for hiking or off-roading through the Arizona wilderness with her husband of 23 years.