BY JASON REDING (’19)

Students in J.R. Wait’s government classes have taken over the school’s Pennies for Patients fundraiser. By revamping the ideas from past years and adding a few new events, students raised nearly $10,000.

Pennies for Patients is a program to raise money in schools for patients with cancers like leukemia and others.

In past years, a faculty adviser spearheaded the campaign with the help of several other teachers, but this year Wait got his students involved as a part of a PBL project.

“It’s a lot easier to make this project work with 150 kids instead of five teachers,” Wait said.

Past fundraiser staples including food such as Canes and iced coffee have been eliminated because the sales violated the school’s contract with AVI Food Services.

“The food services at the school had been really awesome abut the whole thing and really turned a blind eye,” Wait said. “The school just didn’t feel comfortable about going against the contract.”

With the elimination of food-based fundraisers during the school day, the juniors had come up with many new ways to raise the money. They added new ideas this year including a Hat Day, a Chipotle dine out event and a Video Game tournament, which were all profitable.

They also secured 23 corporate sponsorship for Pennies for Patients, according to Wait.

The also brought back the popular No Math Day. On May 1, the math teachers did not start classes that day until they counted all of the money the students brought in. This makes the students want to bring in the most money to get out of having class.

Junior Owen Perue who worked on the math day project says that it was a lot of work but something that he was proud to have done and a good cause to raise money for.

The final event was the Pickleball tournament on May 4-5 for senior citizens in our community.

Wait said that overall the fundraiser was a huge success and that they raised between $9,000-10,000 to help fight childhood cancer.

“There is no better fundraiser,” Wait said.