Saturday, May 24, 2025
For the third year in a row, students at Wellington C. Mepham High School in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District participated in a stairway climb for philanthropic purposes.
The event is organized by the students in the school’s Participation in Government classes, a social studies course for seniors, Kerry Dennis, one of the class’s teachers explained. During the half-year class, the students have to complete a community-service component, and about 15-years-ago, Dennis and Chris Patten, the course’s other teacher, decided to eliminate the individual community service requirement, and make it a group effort.
“The kids work with an organization and create not only awareness for the organization,” Dennis said, “but raise funds and raise school spirit at the same time.”
Since the fall of 2009, the course has raised close to $800,000 for various charities.
The stairway climb, Dennis said, began a few years ago because students in the class were working with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation as their charity for the course. The foundation commemorates the lives and sacrifices of all Sept. 11 heroes, including FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller and FDNY Captain Billy Burke, through various events, including a stairway climb in New York City, where participants climb 104 stories at One World Trade Center — symbolizing strength, hope and resiliency.
Mepham High School is known for its iconic tower, tall façade — and its many sets of stairs — Dennis said.
“The kids wanted to create their own version of (the stairway climb), to pay tribute to the first responders on Sept. 11,” she said, “and because we have so many stairs at Mepham, they thought we could create our own.”
Since then, every students enrolled in the fall portion of Participation in Government have kept the tradition alive, working with different charities.
Students who take the class in the spring work directly with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, as Mepham hosts Bellmore-Merrick’s “Chop Your Locks” for charity event, every year in March.
This fall, the class decided to fundraise for the Ronald McDonald House Charities in the New York Metro-region, which supports families with children battling diseases by offering housing, meals and other vital services. The charity operates a home in New Hyde Park, that each student in the class at Mepham will have an opportunity to visit it at some point this fall, Dennis said.
Students raise funds through various avenues, such as selling sponsorships for flags, which are included in Mepham’s Field of Flags, that gets set up on the school’s front lawn in November. The students also sell T-shirts that can be worn during Mepham’s Battle of the Classes — a school wide competition — and encourage participation in the stairway climb.
Through community service and other modules, seniors at Mepham learn what it means to be an active citizen in society — hence the name of the course, Dennis said.
“The course teaches them about active citizenship, so understanding and being aware of the world around you,” she said. “People often think that active citizenship only means that you vote or run for political office, but there are a multitude of ways we, as Americans, can be active citizens. That is the idea behind the course — to increase the desire to be active citizens, when they turn 18.”
