MARYSVILLE It’s a bit late for a spring cleaning, but Totem Middle School is set to receive a late-summer sprucing-up on Aug. 21.

Cindy Vetter, a science teacher at the school, is hoping to attract between 50-100 volunteers between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. that day.

“We’ll be repainting all the poles the same red and yellow we painted them last year, to make the school a happy place,” Vetter said. “We’ll also be repainting all the doors, and we’d like to put up a mural on one of the walls on the Eighth Street side of the building, where the buses come in.”

According to Vetter, the Marysville School District has already begun landscaping the Totem Middle School grounds, but the volunteer crew assembling on Aug. 21 will complete that work. The district is providing paint and bark chips, but volunteers should bring their own gloves, shovels, rakes, brooms, plastic bags and wheelbarrows.

“We hope to have garbage cans to dump our waste into,” Vetter said. “The district has already done a lot of trimming of the bushes, so we shouldn’t need to do that. We’re looking at doing some planting, and over in our school’s ‘pride garden,’ adding some boulders and other things to dress it up.”

Vetter acknowledged that this day’s labors represent no small list of tasks, but she believes the extra effort is well worth it.

“It gives the school a better image in the eyes of the kids who go here,” Vetter said. “It makes them feel more comfortable in this learning environment. Besides, as my mother said, ‘Many hands make light work.'”

For more information, e-mail Vetter.