'Never too small': Darlington students make big impact through annual community cleanup

Student volunteers are doing much of the heavy lifting for Keep Rome-Floyd Beautiful, and a recent cleanup around Darlington School provided an example of the impact they can have on both a neighborhood and the environment.

About 100 Darlington sophomores, teachers and staff recently spent part of the school’s “Day Zero” collecting litter from areas surrounding campus, removing about 160 pounds of trash during the two-hour effort.

Brant Evans, assistant director of the Upper School at Darlington, said community service ties directly into the school’s mission.

“You know our motto is 'wisdom more than knowledge, service beyond self, honor above everything,'” Evans said. “And that service piece is a huge part of what we want our students to understand while they’re students here and after they leave.”

The annual partnership between Darlington and Keep Rome-Floyd Beautiful began in 2022 as a way to get sophomores outside the school campus and serving the surrounding community, KRFB Coordinator Hannah Bagley said.

For Bagley, the project illustrates the importance of young volunteers. She estimates about 90% of KRFB’s volunteer base consists of students and young adults, generally ranging from about 10 to 22 years old.

“They’re young, they’re excited, they’re willing, but then they’re also our next wave of leadership,” Bagley said. “You’re never too small to make a big impact, and we’re watching that happen.”

Bagley said the Darlington cleanup also gives the organization an opportunity to track changes in littering around the same area over several years.

The amount collected through the cleanup event peaked at about 920 pounds in 2023 before dropping to 480 pounds in 2025 and to just 160 pounds this year.

Bagley said she believes the decline reflects several factors, including continued volunteer attention, improvements in the surrounding neighborhood and growing community pride. She said volunteers are also seeing less illegal dumping than in previous years.

That dumping can have consequences beyond appearances.

Bagley said previous cleanups in the area have uncovered discarded construction materials and open containers of paint, including debris in and around Silver Creek behind Mecklen Street. Because litter and dumped materials can eventually reach waterways, she said what people leave behind can affect wildlife and the broader ecosystem.

“We know that anything that we do, humans impact the environment ecosystem,” Bagley said. “We can either preserve it or destroy it very simply by our actions.”

The benefits of the partnership also extend beyond the annual cleanup. Bagley said Darlington students have started additional environmental efforts on campus, including smaller litter cleanups and litter tracking, while similar interest has grown among students at schools across Rome and Floyd County.

Bagley said she hopes students leave the experience knowing that keeping a community clean requires participation and teamwork.

“I hope they walk away ... understanding that they are part of something much, much bigger than just a little bubble that they live in,” she said.

This article was originally published in the Rome News-Tribune on Sept. 2, 2026.