Jennifer Marino
Holiday shopping is crazy, but it's hard to imagine it taking two and a half hours just to be rung up. When you have over $4,000 to buy toys, it's easy do an hour's worth of shopping and spend two and half hours at the cash register.
This year, the South Side High School student government raised $4,024 from the social studies classes to buy toys for needy children in the community. That's four times the amount that is usually collected.
The money was collected for one week and the class with the most money will get a pizza or bagel party, depending on the time of the class. Members of student government did their best to encourage donations, and they give "a lot of thanks" to the history teachers, said student government president Lana DelliCarpini.
The project started as a toy drive about four years ago, but the students weren't bringing a lot of toys. So it was changed, and students were asked to donate money instead.
On Dec. 16, seven students got the fun job of going to the Kay-Bee toy store in Oceanside to do the shopping. The toys are donated to three local charities, the Hispanic Brotherhood, St. Agnes Outreach and the Economic Opportunity Council. The students contact the charities to see what ages to buy for. This year the age range was from three months to 12 years. Besides fun toys, the students try to pick out some with educational value too, said DelliCarpini.
Kay-Bee gave the shoppers a 10 percent charity discount, plus there was a 25 percent off sale going on too. This helped the $4,000 go a long way. DelliCarpini offered her thanks to Greg and Liz at the store who patiently rang them for those two and half hours.
