Life

Besser Elementary raises $51,530 in one month

ALPENA -- Raising over $50,000 in one month is no small feat, and Besser Elementary School has done it.

In October, the Parent Advisory Committee headed up a fundraiser that raised a whopping $51,530, thanks to participation from students, parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors, and supporters of Besser Elementary School.

"At the end of last year, I heard about this fundraiser from my cousin who lives in Atlanta, Georgia," said Tracie Granata, Besser Elementary PAC president. "I brought it to our last PAC meeting of the year last year, and we were brainstorming all these different ideas."

They tweaked a few things and voted on a calendar fundraiser in which, for each day of October, students filled their calendar with sponsorships for 31 days.

"Every student in the school got a calendar," Granata said. "Each day was a dollar amount. So, day one was one dollar. Day two was two dollars. Day 31 was $31 … If a student filled the calendar, it was $496 for the school."

And 100% of that funding goes back to the school. The students did receive prizes and incentives in the form of Besser Bulldog spirit items for achieving certain goals.

"We wanted to help take pressure off of teachers and parents and other people involved in the school, of having to sell stuff to go on field trips or to have wants and needs of their classroom," Granata explained. "Then, ultimately, we wanted to put money into a savings account because we do need a new playground. So, we really wanted to start fundraising, too, for that."

She said the playground equipment is over two decades old, and needs to be updated.

"It's definitely time," Granata said. "There's a lot of wear and tear, and stuff is breaking."

She said the stakes were high for the class competition.

"The classroom that raised the most money got a pizza party," Granata said.

Fifth-grade teacher Lindsay Sheppard's class raised the most money, at $5,652, winning the pizza party. Mrs. Sutton's third-grade class raised $4,914, and Mrs. Purdy's fourth-grade class raised $4,343.

"In fifth grade, this is one of the years where we get to take a big field trip," Sheppard said. "We're planning to take the kids down to Greenfield Village in Dearborn again, like we did last year, which can be pricey."

She said getting the students excited about raising money for the field trip helped them achieve such a high number.

"A pizza party is always a good incentive, as well," she added. "They were really motivated by that."

Sheppard noted how dedicated some students were to meeting the goal.

"I remember, one of our PAC parents was coming around, collecting money on the last day, and one of my kids found an amount of cents in his backpack, it was less than a dollar, but he chased her down in the hallway, just in case we needed however many cents it was, to win the pizza party," Sheppard said.

As a teacher, she said it is so helpful to have this money raised so that she can focus on teaching and not worrying about supplies or field trip funding.

"Fundraising can be a really big project for teachers," Sheppard said. "It does put a lot on the teachers, of just organizing, getting that money together, facilitating those fundraisers, so we really appreciate PAC taking that on and having a goal to raise enough money to fund all of the school's projects for the year. That takes a lot of pressure off of us."

"It just takes pressure off of parents and families, too," Granata added. "Teachers just want to teach."

Reach Darby Hinkley at dhinkley@thealpenanews.com, or 989-358-5691.