BROOKLYN, Ohio -- A controversy is growing in Brooklyn -- literally growing.

NewsChannel5's Leon Bibb reported that the uproar is about trees and bushes and shrubs and how they got planted.

Students at Roadoan Elementary School thought it would be appropriate to plant a tree to help remember an 8-year-old classmate who died of a brain aneurysm. The idea grew, and local landscapers heard about it.

"And so they came to volunteer their services over there," said Gretchen Derethik, principal of Brooklyn High School.

They even brought enough plants to beautify Brooklyn High.

But school custodians -- who are landscapers -- filed a grievance, claiming it was their work to do -- not volunteers'. They argued that they should get overtime pay for the work volunteers did.

"It is (the work of the union)," Pat Kirlough said. "It's in our contract, and that's what it says."

At Tuesday's Brooklyn School Board meeting, tempers were hot.

Brooklyn administrators wouldn't talk about the grievance itself, saying only that the planting was a volunteer effort.

"The landscapers did not come as a landscaping company," Derethik said. "(They came) because their son was a friend of the young boy who passed away over at Roadoan."

"I'm sorry, but you can't pick and choose what you take out of the job description and then call it volunteerism," Kirlough said.

There is agreement on one point. Both sides said that it was right to honor the memory of the 8-year-old student who died.