December 12, 2016 at 3:22 p.m.
Box top contest benefits Crescent, Pelican schools
Box top contest benefits Crescent, Pelican schools
By Kayla Thomason-
Crescent Elementary School received $2,000 for first place and Pelican Elementary School received $500 for third place. The second-place winner, Tomorrow River Charter School out of Amherst Junction, received $1,000.
The contest ran on Trig's social media sites from Nov. 16-23.
"Throughout the course of the past year we have tracked any incremental purchases that we made on products through General Mills and certain qualifying purchases would earn us box top certificates from General Mills and we saved them all up and formed them into three prizes," said Kindl Furtak, Trig's director of marketing.
The contest was open to schools serving kindergarten through eighth-grade.
"They had to go onto our Facebook page and they had to tell us why they deserved the box tops and post pictures to show their school spirit," Furtak said, adding that it wasn't easy to choose the winners. "It's always a tough decision to make because we want to help everybody and they all do some really neat things, but we do as much as we can."
Janice Bureta, Pelican PAC graphic designer, was pleased her school won the $500 prize.
"We were really excited and surprised," "It was unexpected and we're definitely happy about it," she said, adding that school officials have yet to decide how the money will be used.
"We're just really appreciative that Trig's hosts this and it will definitely help us out for our budget which will help our students at Pelican," she said.
The students were informed of their good fortune Friday during their Jump Start program.
"(The students) were excited, I think it was a surprise at Jump Start this morning," Bureta said.
Pelican PAC submitted a photo that came from the school's biggest fundraiser - Strut for FUNd.
"What we do is, we have the kids take pledges and run laps for 20 minutes and they get rewards for reaching certain levels or raising money, like a pizza party," she said. "We had talked about (in the letter) how we are working together as a school and setting goals to benefit our school."
Bureta is grateful Pelican was chosen for the prize.
"I think it's great," Bureta said. "Trig's does a lot for the community and it really gives us a boost for the fundraising efforts for the year."
Crescent Elementary School staff, students and PAC were equally thrilled to receive a prize.
"It's just a great opportunity for our kids here at Crescent," said Kari Volk, interim principal.
Gayle Daniel, Crescent Elementary School principal, said their PAC is thinking about purchasing more Chromebooks for student use.
"There is a charging cart and all the Chromebooks will go in there and the teachers are able to take that cart from room to room as they need and kids take the Chrome books out and they'll each have a Chrome book to use for a while and they'll put them back in the cart for the next class to use," Daniel said.
The students use the Chromebooks to research, type up papers, run apps, create Google slide presentations and more, so the Chromebook cart is like a portable computer lab, school officials said.
"I was super excited (that we won), I thought this was a fantastic opportunity to be able to put more technology into our students' hands and how awesome that it is that Crescent was selected," she said.
"I think it's fantastic (that this is held), I mean it's such a giving community to say 'Show us why you have school spirit' and the PAC members started sending it in and it was fantastic."
In their letter, the Crescent PAC said their students are kind and caring and want to give back to the community.
"They're (PAC) a very active and supportive group," Daniel said.
Trig's is starting their box top process again and will have the contest next year after school starts.
"I work for a really great company and it's really important to us to always give back to our communities and we appreciate that they support us and we like to do what we can to give back," Furtak said. "It's really fun to get to see what all of the educators and the students are working on out there and it's a really fun way to get involved."
Kayla Breese may be reached at [email protected].
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