by JIM CULLEN
Kids care regularly for animals at Kyle Elementary. Caring for goats are (left to right) Sierra Calderon, Kayla Garcia, pre-schooler Avery Morales and Michael Mince, with two of the school’s most recent arrivals, Billy and Lilly. (Photo by Kerri jones)
Kyle Elementary School has become well-known locally for the amazing Environmental Studies Center the Panther staff has put together. That extended site offers a lush oasis of plants, ponds and animals where once nothing existed but barren, unused dead space between building wings.
Among those Kyle staffers dedicated to the development and success of the center is longtime Panther teacher Kerri Jones and, as those familiar with her classroom know, she puts a highlight on her students learning about animals and how to care for them.
The line between the center and the classroom is often non-existent, as students learn to handle and become familiar with small critters as part of their extended science lessons. Such was the setting recently, as a visitor came to the school to have a look at the latest arrivals in the center, motherless baby goats that are being lovingly nurtured by parent volunteers and Panther students.
The feeding schedule wasn’t geared to Hays Free Press staff time, but photos were promised and, as an alternative, animals a-plenty appeared from their cages in the Jones classroom. Handled with care by their student guardians, one creature after another got its due introduction.
As for the baby goats, their story had to be told as well. Turns out Jones’ mom, Martha Knight of Georgetown, had the newborns after their mom had died and wanted to know if her teacher daughter wanted to bring the orphaned baby goats to Kyle for some of that KES care. The answer was “yes,” but within days the new family grew to three, as Panther parent Susan Smith produced yet another motherless baby goat from her family’s Giddings-area farm.
At the time of the visit, parents Smith and Sheila Morales were sharing the feeding schedule. Jones gets the bottles ready in the morning and Smith or Morales picks them up, taking four students to each feeding. “The kids are extremely motivated to get the special duty,” Jones says, noting the goat-naming contest that was about to take place in the school library (update: the winning names were Billy, Willy and Lilly).
“I just think it’s got great value and gives the kids (and even teachers) real life connections with the animal world,” Jones said, adding that it’s common for many of her co-workers to stand transfixed watching the feedings.
Whether it’s Oreo the black and white rabbit, Checker the corn snake or Templeton the rat, all denizens of the Jones classroom, or the newly-arrived baby goats being bottle-raised through the Kyle Environmental Studies Center, it’s obvious things continue to be wholly animal-friendly at Kyle Elementary.
