Students in the Atlantic Middle School recently participated in a monetary fund raiser to help support the Atlantic Police Department and Reserve Department’s “Family Dreams Christmas” and “Shop with a Cop” programs.Officer Devin Hogue said a group of sixth grade students in Mrs. Reilly’s English classes were reading the book “Homecoming” by Cynthia Voight.  In the story there are children that are in great need and students were tasked by their teacher to come up with a project for the school to participate in a benefit for those who are less fortunate.

6th graders who participated in the benefit reading program. (Atl. P-D photo)

The students in these classes requested that officials with the Atlantic Police Department come and explain how their two programs work. After they were presented with the information they then put together skits, and presentations to give to all the “home bases” in the school. The presentations explained the two programs facilitated by the Police and Reserve Departments. They then challenged the students to see which “home bases” at each grade level could collect the most funds to be donated towards the two programs.

Once the challenge was accepted by the students they were given until December 17^th to collect as much as they could for their “Home Base.” On December 18^th Officer Devin Hogue went to the school to present certificates to the winning classes. In 6^th Grade the winning class was Mrs. Reilly’s class with $92.60. In 7^th grade, Mrs. Oglebee’s class with $51.64. In 8^th grade, Mrs. Leiferman’s class with $78.98. Another awesome aspect to their fund raiser was that Hy-Vee store manager Amy Jordahl agreed to pay sixth grade students a penny for every minute they logged reading over this time. Between around 60 students they logged a little over 19,000 minutes of reading either in school or at home. This would total out to more than 11 days of reading by the students. This lead to Hy-Vee contributing $191.64 towards the total amount collected by the school. The overall amount collected and donated by the “Home Bases” in 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades was $824.38!!

The three winning classes will be treated to a pizza party on Friday January 10^th. The pizza will be donated and brought to the school by Pizza Ranch. Officers from the Atlantic Police Department will also attend the party as a way to say thank you and give an overview of how the two programs turned out.

The Atlantic Police and Reserve Departments want to send a very big THANK YOU to all the students in the Atlantic Middle School who helped this project be so successful. Their efforts are greatly appreciated and really goes to show how great and giving the community they are growing up in is.