Edgewood Students, Staff Help Hungry With Food Drive
WARSAW — Faculty of Edgewood Middle School presented the results of that school’s annual food drive to the Warsaw Community Schools’ board of trustees at that panel’s regular board meeting Monday night, Feb. 18.
The school began collecting food Dec. 1 and stopped accumulating on Dec. 17, scrambling to finish the distribution by the last day of school before the Christmas break on Dec. 21.
Students and faculty set up stations at the entrances of local grocery stores and solicited shoppers to buy items for the collection. After collecting was completed, family boxes were assembled and distributed to families of students from Claypool, Eisenhower, Madison and Lincoln elementary schools, as well as Edgewood. In addition, contributions were made to Our Father’s House, Combined Community Services, Gateway Families, Department of Transportation employees and other local churches and organizations.
After achieving their goals, students who participated were awarded with a pizza and ice cream party.
According to faculty member David Cook, he and fellow faculty member Zach Netzley were part of competing classrooms who balanced the fine line between competition and collaboration.
“Between the two of us I think we had three and a half times the school’s initial goal,” said Cook to the board. “So, it was no small endeavor. The kids were helping a lot.”
Cook told the board that one of the goals was to teach the participating children good citizenship.
Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert told the teachers that he witnessed some of that good community stewardship first hand.
“I ended up walking over to Edgewood at just the right moment unplanned as you were loading up some of the vehicles that were going out there and it was funny watching them (the students) trying to cram everything into those vehicles and they couldn’t do it,” Hoffert said.