We’re proud of the San Benito High School students who raised
nearly $10,000 this year to help two local families in need. Not
only does this show a dedication to community rarely recognized in
youth, but it also shows our public schools are teaching more than
the three R’s.
We’re proud of the San Benito High School students who raised nearly $10,000 this year to help two local families in need. Not only does this show a dedication to community rarely recognized in youth, but it also shows our public schools are teaching more than the three R’s.
Last week, students presented two local families with $5,000 checks after setting a bold fundraising goal for themselves. Students told the Free Lance this week that they plan to meet their $10,000 goal in the next few days after coming up $800 short following Friday’s benefit ball.
The money will help the families of Kyle Rhodes, a high school senior with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and Logan Wood, a local 7-month-old boy battling cystic fibrosis.
In performing this act of compassion and kindness, our local students learned a great deal more than they could have in a year’s worth of study halls.
Raising $10,000 is no small feat. The students raised the money with the support of the community and guidance from longtime educators such as Juan Robledo.
The students, led by the Associated Student Body and others, put a lot of work into the benefit ball.
It took dedication, planning, organization, perseverance, patience and a lot of compassion.
Coming up $800 short after months of work can be crushing, but these students persevered in the face of failure and will, we have no doubt, reach their goal.
Students also learned something about what it means to be a part of the community.
Not only did they recognize the needs of those around them, but they also found a way to help those people in a productive way that should serve as an inspiration for all of San Benito County.
These are real world lessons, the kind that will be remembered long after the quadratic equation is forgotten.
We are proud of these students and we hope the community recognizes their achievement. We also hope this shatters that persistent myth that today’s youth are too obsessed with video games and MTV to pay attention to anything outside their small worlds.
We hear these attacks on our youth all too often.
They usually start with “Back in my day …” and other cliche phrases. But the truth is: When many of us were in high school, we couldn’t see past next year’s prom dress or even third-period French.
Many of us didn’t recognize that those around us, perhaps living right down the street, needed our help.
Those two $5,000 checks also prove that our local public schools are teaching more than just what’s on the California High School Exit Exam. Public schools do a lot more than we think and we’re proud that San Benito High School continually goes above and beyond to educate the next generation.
