Saline High School senior Whitney Webb; junior Evan Medvec, senior Nick Abess; agriculture teacher David Mellor; and senior Matt Gale shovel up soil last week with the rest of their agriculture class to lower the ground level for their future greenhouse at Saline High School

Angela Cesere | AnnArbor.com

The greenhouse, which was funded by Saline's CARES recreation millage, will provide a host of educational opportunities for science classes. Mellor, who teaches agricultural and plant science at the high school, also hopes the project will win a $50,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant the district can use to make it green powered.

Pepsi Refresh Grants give entrepreneurs, nonprofits and businesses money for new initiatives. The initiatives are voted on at Pepsi’s website each month. Contestants submit their ideas, Pepsi chooses the best ones to put up for voting on the site, and the ones that receive the most votes during the month can win $5,000, $25,000, $50,000, or $250,000. Saline's project can start receiving votes Nov. 1.

In July, Saline schools won a Pepsi Refresh Grant of $25,000 to implement Project Lead the Way, a national program that prepares students for careers in science and technology, in the middle school.

Mellor is leading the building of the greenhouse and hopes to have it up and working during winter semester. He said the Pepsi grant could also be used to purchase biodiesel equipment.

“We’d be taking the used French fry oil, which they now pay to have hauled away for the district, and we will make biodiesel out of it, and that can be used to power the grounds equipment,” he said.

Mellor said the green energy equipment could give students an introduction to green energy jobs.

“This will be cutting edge for kids,” he said, “and that’s where the jobs are going to be, in alternative energy.”

Now, the greenhouse just needs votes, Mellor said. “We need to get all of the students voting every day, as many parents (as possible) passing on the voting site to Facebook and their co-workers,” he said.

Whether the greenhouse wins the Pepsi Refresh Grant or not, it will be used by plant and agricultural science students, and students in the South and West Washtenaw Consortium. The consortium allows students to be bused in from other area schools for hands-on training in fields such as agri-science and culinary arts. You can vote for the greenhouse at Pepsi’s website every day in November.

Tara Cavanaugh is a freelance reporter for AnnArbor.com. To read more stories about Saline, visit our Saline page.