Miami Palmetto Senior High junior Jack David recently completed his Eagle Scout project. David did his project at Howard Drive Elementary, the school he and his sister Emma attended.
One part of the project was refurbishing the memorial for Robert Braddock, a physical education teacher who passed away. The memorial was in the back of the PE field. Along the fence line there were some dead trees.
“I cleared out the fence line, mulched the area and made a little garden,” he says. “I made ten benches.”
The benches were made of treated wood. David found a diagram that he liked and used it as a template for the benches. He cut the wood at his grandfather’s woodshop and sanded it down.
“They were assembled at the site the day of the project,” he says.
Those benches provide seating for the outdoor classroom area.
Another part of the project was building two brick walkways. One was a 33 footlong walkway next to one of the buildings. They dug the path, packed it down, put down sand and then bricks. The second, a 19-foot walkway, went from the parking to the PE shelter.
He also refurbished the memorial garden dedicated to Brianna Vega.
“She was in my fourth grade class and she had cancer,” David says. “What I did there, I re-mulched the garden area, put fresh plants and made it look really nice.”
David planted six donated mahogany trees in the area.
In all he had more than 40 volunteers planting, building walkways, building benches, mulching and clearing trees. The bulk of the work was done February 9. The weekend before, he and almost a dozen volunteers cleared out dead trees.
David is a member of Troop 457, which is know for helping boys become Eagle Scouts.
“We have nine Eagle scouts this year in total,” he says.
He and the rest of that group will get their official awards and dedications April 27 at the Eagle Court of Honor. In order to qualify, David had to earn 21 merit badges, have had a leadership position, plan and complete an Eagle project, and successfully complete a board of review.
At Palmetto, David is a member of the Science National Honor Society, the National Honor Society, and the Photography Club.
He enjoys taking pictures of architecture and nature. Although he’s taken three years of photography at Palmetto, he sees it as a hobby not as a profession.
In college he plans to study something STEM related – engineering is a possibility. His top schools are the University of Florida and the Naval Academy.
Outside of school, David is a member of the student leadership advisory council with school board member Dr. Larry Feldman.
“We attend the meetings that are held at different schools each time,” he says. “We learn about the schools and Dr. Feldman usually asks us about different issues. He said that he likes the feedback and uses it when he goes to the school board meetings.”
With the leadership advisory council, he’s gone to schools such as the MAST Academy in Homestead and the Bio-Tech Academy.
“When I went to Bio-Tech, they talked about wildlife conservation,’ he says. “I went to another school and they had a presenter, they talked about other types of conservation. They had us dissect a squid.”
In 2017, David participated in a Science Quest at University of Florida Center for Precollegiate Education and Training. During the weeklong residential program, he toured facilities, attended lectures and workshops, learned about research and worked on a group project.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
