Holy Family students get ride to remember
By DIANE GASPER-O'BRIEN
End-of-the-school-year parties are common during May.
But the first-grade class of Ann Weber at Holy Family Elementary School celebrated Wednesday in a way it soon won't forget.
Weber and her 22 students hitched a ride to McDonald's for lunch in a Hummer stretch limousine.
The youngsters were being rewarded for winning a school-wide competition to collect box tops, soup labels and Tyson food product labels between November and April.
Weber's class amassed a total of 3,286 box tops and labels to contribute to Holy Family's total collection of 27,639.
Holy Family -- which participates in Box Tops 4 Education, Campbell's Labels for Education and Tyson Project A+ labels programs -- is ranked first among nearly 20 schools in a 25-mile region in the national Box Tops 4 Education program.
It also ranks 10th among more than 1,300 schools in Kansas that participate in the program.
Lisa Karlin, chairwoman of the label committee at Holy Family, said the committee decided to have a school-wide contest this year to "raise awareness" about collecting the box tops and labels for a good cause.
"Once people get in the habit of doing it, it's hard not to," said Karlin, who has two children, first-grader Ryan and kindergartner Brandon, attending Holy Family. "Our goal was to increase participation, and it did that."
The school earns 10 cents cash per box top and 24 cents for every Tyson label turned in to the programs. For the Campbell's soup labels, Holy Family receives points that go toward school supplies that can be selected from a program catalog.
"It's definitely a good fundraiser," Karlin said.
2 HHS teams place at BPA nationals
Six Hays High School students made last week's trip to Reno, Nev., a worthwhile one.
Two teams in HHS' chapter of Business Professionals of America placed in the top eight in their competition at the National Leadership Conference.
The global marketing team created a presentation about a sporting goods business in the international market. One of the requirements was to choose a sport not as popular in the United States and market it in another country.
The team of seniors Preston Becker and Matt Johnson and junior Bryan Tsao chose Taiwan and marketed the idea of providing the Taiwan soccer team with uniforms and equipment for the 2008 Olympics.
The video production team of sophomores Bryant Bombardier, Jordan Niernberger and Jared Wasinger created a public service announcement about the environment and included video of sections of Big Creek and research on car exhaust emissions.
In addition to attending leadership sessions, the HHS students helped present a workshop on Web design tools. Tsao also took an advanced accounting test from which results were to be released later this spring.
