Chestnut Ridge kids wrangle up the goods for SAC
Students at Chestnut Ridge School help take the canned goods from the jail cell to the delivery truck. The collected cans were critical to the success of the Share-A-Christmas food drive.
Every student who has come through middle school and high school probably has heard of detention, that ugly act of doing something wrong at school, only to be sent to detention class to serve an hour after school, like a jailed prisoner.
On Tuesday, Nov. 24, the students at Chestnut Ridge got a chance to strike back at the sheriff, so to speak.
With a cowboy Wild West theme, sheriff/principal J.T. Luneborg challenged the students to raise a certain amount of canned goods and food for Holmes County Share-A-Christmas. If they brought in enough, he’d spend a day in jail.
Not only did the students come through to send Luneborg to the hoosegow, but also they went ahead and built a jail cell for him in the school’s office area, where Luneborg was sentenced to a one-day jail term.
The jail itself was built by the school’s vocational class, and it was an impressive sight. The jail was initially created to hold all of the canned goods, but it took on a more notorious presence when the idea of jailing the principal if they raised $3,000 arose.
It was all in fun, and the real winners were the many area families who will receive presents and food courtesy of Holmes County Share-A-Christmas.
The week-long challenge was broken down into daily food requirements. Included in the “12 Most Wanted” list were peanut butter, cereal, tuna and other canned meats, beans, rice and pasta, macaroni and cheese, cake mixes, canned meals, canned soup, pancake mix and syrup, jelly, and paper products.
Chestnut Ridge secretary Darlene Yoder took charge of the effort to send Luneborg to the pen and made it a fun experience as they challenged the kids with classroom challenges and a pizza party on the other end of the rainbow for the winning class.
"We created the '12 Most Wanted' poster to give the kids ideas of what we wanted to bring in,” Yoder said. “Our kids love this, and they actually came up with the idea of if they met our goals, could they put Mr. Luneborg in jail. This continues to be one of our biggest fundraisers, and the students really have taken it to heart. We had different days like dress up like a cowboy or cowgirl day, silly sock day, pajama day and twin day, so we tried to make it fun and unique on every day.”
Luneborg said aside from raising food and paper products for SAC, the other encouraging part about this event is that it teaches the students a great lesson on giving and community service. He said the Amish community has always stressed a sense of unity in the community, and this event is a good way to portray that importance for the kids.
“All of this money stays right here in Holmes County, which makes it a really nice community-service project for the kids to get involved in,” Luneborg said.
Luneborg, who also serves as the principal at Mt. Hope School, said they raised $1,400 in addition to the Chestnut Ridge effort.
Not only did the kids come through with the goods, they also built up quite the kitty in terms of raising money. Despite not being asked to fundraise, the school set sail on a financial fundraiser with a goal of raising $3,000 for SAC. They nearly reached it from Monday through Thursday, racking up $2,934, then totally blew past it with a freaky Friday that saw students bring in $1,905 alone, bringing the total to $4,840. The school staff helped bump that number up to an even $5,000, and Share-A-Christmas volunteer chairman Bob Porter was blown away by the support.
“I’m about ready to cry,” Porter said after receiving the check from Luneborg. “Every year this school does such an amazing job of collecting food, and every year they come through with a donation, which is just incredible.”
Luneborg said the kids enjoy the physical part of collecting food, but the staff also stresses the need for funds because of how SAC boasts real purchasing power.
“We know they can get food at a far cheaper amount than we can, so that is one reason we like to donate the money too,” Luneborg said. “This is by far the most we have ever raised.”
With the effort, Luneborg found himself entrenched in the jail cell from mid-morning through the end of the day, with plenty of students coming through to razz him a bit along their way to elsewhere in the school.
Obviously, the lesson Luneborg learned was don’t offer up a challenge to your students or you may have to pay the price.