Human nature tells us to give of ourselves and to give back to our community. Your company vehicles probably drive by a dozen places every day where people could benefit from your giving. And chances are, your kids or your neighbors’ kids are those people. We’re talking about the local high schools – both vocational/technical schools or general education. And what you’d be donating are the logs you’d otherwise be disposing of anyway.

Prescott High School students stand with wood they milled as part of their wood technology program. This stack calculated out to be 1,566 board feet totaling $12,791 in savings and fund generation. All photos courtesy of Kyle Schmidt.

Kyle Schmidt is a tech-ed teacher, aka the “Fab Lab Director,” at Prescott High School in Prescott, Wisconsin, and the innovator behind a grassroots program that benefits the students, the schools and local tree care companies. The program’s students mill donated logs into lumber and use it to create furniture and other products in school woodworking shops. Schmidt even started his own tree care company, Home Yard & Tree Services in Hammond, Wisc., in part to provide wood for the program.

Schmidt says the program takes a bit of initial investment, but has been a win-win-win. The tree care company wins through a charitable tax donation, as well as helping their local community, according to Schmidt. The school wins by reduced funding for these programs and generating revenue with the processed lumber. And the students win by learning real-world job skills and getting exposure to career opportunities in forestry, urban tree care and numerous other areas.

Students self-design furniture, blueprint each individual piece and then calculate the board feet they will need to create it.

How does the program work?
A main hurdle to success in this program is pitching the idea to your local school’s administration and making sure the school is on board with the curriculum, as well as having an instructor who is behind the program. Schmidt was the driving force at Prescott High School, and his program was inspired by University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point instructor Jared Schroeder.

Schmidt had ideas about such a program, and when he attended a four-day seminar on the math and science of milling and kiln-drying lumber led by Schroeder, they got to talking. Schroeder provided his curriculum, and it put Schmidt’s program on the fast track to success. Donations began from Schmidt’s own tree care business, and when other tree companies heard about his program – and this outlet for upcycling unused logs – they began making donations to the Prescott program as well. These included Premium Plots LLC in Diamond Bluff, Wisc., and Conrad Tree Service LLC in Prescott. Even local community members have donated logs from trees cut on their properties.

For the program to be successful, you’ll need to show the school how the investment in a small, reliable mill (cost between $10,000 and $15,000) can ultimately lead to reduced costs and future savings for school programs. Another need, to speed the process of drying the raw logs, is a dehumidifying kiln.

Prescott High School developed plans to build its own kiln at a cost of only $900. Schmidt’s student built the kiln in two weeks, and he’s willing to share the construction plans for the kiln. Once completed, the students were drying logs almost immediately, already saving money. Prescott High School realized a payback on their investment within one year. Other schools may take two years, says Schmidt.

The stack took 18 days to dry in the school’s dehumidifier kiln. It is one of three they currently have on site.

In class
You also need to show the school that the donations they’re receiving will eventually become something functional for the school and beyond. “This wood is used for any class that needs it in the entire district,” says Schmidt.

The Wood Technology classes at Prescott self-design furniture, blueprint each individual piece and then calculate the board feet they will need to create it. Students calculate the cost using the current market price of the lumber. The student (or the student’s parents) buys the lumber at half the market value. If a student’s project costs $100, they would pay only $50. The student mills the lumber with the instructor, and then the magic starts for the student.

“The students fill their dehumidifier kiln and do moisture testing on the lumber till the hardwood is below 12% and the softwood is below 9%. Usually, it’s 15 to 19 days in the kiln,” says Schmidt. Once the lumber hits those dryness values, the projects can be started.

“We build community projects for parks and trail systems, and have built $5,000 to $6,000 worth of cabinets for under $1,500 for departments in the school that have been waiting almost a decade for cabinets,” says Schmidt. “Sometimes, the funding just isn’t there in school districts. So we solve the problem for them. In the last five years, we’ve reached a difference of nearly $150,000 in savings and funding generation by doing just this. At Prescott High School, the students do it all.”

Talk about a functional program that provides real-world experience! Schmidt calls it “from forest to furniture.”

Growth
Schmidt goes on to detail some other uses for the donations. “This program has done wonders for us. Our community has made suggestions to help our woods program. ‘Why don’t you sell the slabs and unusable wood as firewood?’ Then another community member saw the firewood sheds we built. He liked that we used the slab wood as siding, and he ordered a shed. Now we have three shed orders for next year.”

“The program keeps growing in ways we never saw coming,” Schmidt says. “Harley Hotchkiss from Premium Plots LLC sent us a sawdust fire-starter idea, and now our welding students are building a bottle jack press to compress the sawdust. The welding students have built steel ramps for the logs and a hook to hang a sawdust collection system off the end of our mill. I give 95% of the credit to our students. The program is blowing up because of them.”

As the program continues year after year, the school begins to realize more revenue, and the costs of equipment and future logs pay for themselves. For Prescott High School, “In the first year, we have saved more than $15,000 that can be spent on other program improvements and other materials,” says Schmidt.

The school was spending $10,ooo to $15,000 a year on lumber and does not have to do that anymore due to the donations from local tree companies, according to Schmidt.

Cutting costs and making money
Data from real schools undertaking this program is an excellent carrot to entice your local school to get interested, according to Schmidt. Here are some real-world figures shared by Schmidt and what Prescott High School has realized for their tech-ed program in the short duration of a curriculum like this. “We have done a $28,000 turnaround in just eight weeks of school, and can easily hit $60,000 in a year’s time,” he offers.

For participating tree companies that donate, the school will provide a receipt for the market value of the logs, depending on the type of wood and estimated board feet that can be drawn from the logs. Across many areas of the country, it can be difficult to get rid of cut logs. Often, a tree care company needs to drive long distances to a compost site and actually pay the site to dispose of logs. With this program, although there is no revenue up front, the tree company is getting a future tax write-off and creating a bond with its local community.

A community member liked the firewood sheds the students built, with slab wood as siding, and ordered one. Now they have three shed orders for next year, according to Kyle Schmidt.

Workforce development
Besides your tree care company making a tax-deductible contribution to your local school, you’re also helping develop the next generation of forestry-industry employees, whether they end up in forestry management, become an arborist or become employed in cabinetry or housing construction. According to Schmidt, each student’s future employability is enhanced with each project, and it’s a great way to get students of all genders exposed to real-life work experience.

“The students learn actual forestry skills among other skills, including math (by calculating board feet in a felled log), science (identifying species, observing wood-grain patterns, documenting the natural drying of lumber through moisture-content readings) and participating in customer service (taking orders from individuals for what to build with the milled timber), creating a healthy work ethic and much more,” says Schmidt.

The students also develop a “pay it forward” mentality, where they realize someone is providing something to them and they eventually pay that off by using those resources to benefit someone else.

Creating a program like this from the ground up in your community also can be a public-relations opportunity. Once the school starts realizing benefits, be sure to share their data and successes with the local paper or on your website. “Especially, share it with other TCIA members,” says Schmidt, “who will be inspired to follow your lead and start a program in their community.”

Conclusion
Although investing in a program like this takes a little time to show its financial rewards to the school, Schmidt relays there are long-lasting residual effects of what your company is doing to help the students learn and what the community gains.

What can you do next? Start researching tech/vocational schools in your area to see if they can benefit from your donation. Not sure where to start? Schmidt is a major resource to help get a program started. To learn more about this program and how to turn your wood waste into a community resource, contact Kyle Schmidt at (715) 970-0078, or email him at homeyardtreeservice@gmail.com.

Tim Bartelt is a freelance writer based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and has more than 20 years of work experience in the
outdoor-power-equipment industry.