Wacky Wednesday Penny Drive on March 11th

Recently, our school community lost a friend. At the start of the school year, Steve Harland, our former custodian, discovered that he had terminal cancer. This tragic news resulted in Steve taking a leave of absence from his duties at Riverside Elementary School. Last month, Steve passed away...


When the make-up of our K-2 Student Advisory Team was reconfigured to start the third quarter, I asked them the same question that I ask every student advisory team during our first meeting. I asked them if they were able to change something about our school, what change would they make. After spending some time brainstorming two ideas began surfacing to the top. The K-2 Student Advisory Team wanted to 1) upgrade our playground and 2) do some sort of a fundraiser.

Through conversation facilitated by our school counselor, Ms. DeLacy, and myself, we discussed multiple things. We discussed how our Elementary Support Organization wrote (thank you!) and was awarded a $45K grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation (thank you!) to upgrade a majority our playground this upcoming spring. We discussed fundraisers, and how if that was the avenue that we went down we would need to be raising money specifically for someone or something. One of the students in our group, knowing that Steve had been gone from work for an extended amount of time and that he was really sick, recommended that our fundraiser benefit Steve.

Along the way our thinking shifted from doing a fundraiser for Steve, to doing a fundraiser to add a buddy bench to our playground. A buddy bench is a bench that will promote friendship on our playground at our school. We also decided that we could inscribe the back of our buddy bench with some sort of tribute to Steve that would help us remember him.

...I was fortunate enough to speak with Steve just days before he passed away. I was able to inform him of our idea for how we planned to remember him at school; he was honored to be a part of the work that we are planning.

Parents of students at Riverside Elementary School - look for a note to come home this Friday, March 6th via Friday folders that will outline our Wacky Wednesday penny drive that we are planning for March 11th to raise money for a buddy bench that will help us to remember our lost friend.