A batch of third-graders at Jefferson Elementary School are hoping to help the environment and earn money for a class field trip, all at the same time.
Since September, students of Daryl Sigg and Audrey Gardner have been gathering aluminum and tin cans in receptacles in the Jefferson school’s front entrance. Gardner periodically takes the cans to Ray’s Metal Depot in LaHarpe, where aluminum cans fetch 40 cents a pound and tin cans 5 cents per pound.
The students have raised $72 of the $324 needed to pay admission for their classes to visit Science City at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., in May.
Budget cutbacks affecting USD 257 mean taking such a trip would require students to pay their own admission, “and we know there are struggling families who probably can’t pay for something like that,” Gardner said. “That’s why we decided to do this recycling project.”
Students, their family members and even others in the community have deposited cans in the receptacle. More are encouraged to do so.
Gardner prefers the aluminum cans be crushed, “so that we can fit more in the bags when we take them to Ray’s,” she said.
For more information, contact Gardner or Sigg at 365-4840.
Drive aids class, environment
