Spirit of giving not lost on Norton City Schools
By Mike D’Agruma
NORTON — Chuck Kaufman has been employed in the Norton City Schools District for only 11 of its 175 years, yet the pride with which he speaks of his job and school system almost makes one think he helped build one of the community’s first one-room schoolhouses or was involved in banding them into a single institution.
The assistant director of bands doesn’t look lightly at 175 years of history. To him, the anniversary isn’t just a passing milestone — it’s something that should be celebrated year-round.
According to Kaufman, each of the district’s six
schools came up with some way to commemorate the anniversary.
Norton High, Primary and Norton 21 and Cornerstone elementary
schools recently teamed up to create a giant student-formed
“175” at the high school stadium football
field, while Grill Elementary School had a balloon launch.
But Kaufman really wanted to
do something that would not only honor a specific point
in time, but the community that he feels goes above
and beyond when asked. He presented a simple idea for
Norton Middle School’s contribution — a
toy drive, which took place Dec. 4-13.
The goal, however, was a far
cry from simple. Kaufman wanted to collect a total of
175 toys from each class from kindergarten to 12th grade
in nine days — a total of 2,100 toys to be donated
to Toys For Tots.
Kaufman began orchestrating small
band toy drives about five years ago after band boosters
purchased a 48-foot-long trailer. His “Fill the
Band Truck” campaigns were designed
to thank the community for its support of the program.
Trying to fill the band truck
with as many toys as band members can bring is one thing,
but having the specific goal of filling the band truck
with approximately 2,100 toys is quite another —
especially when you have five of your six district buildings
in the midst of food drives and additional fund-raising
ventures.
According to Kaufman, the middle
school teachers love to organize good-spirited contests
between classes or grades when it comes time to give.
For example, the middle school collected about 14,000
food items during its food drive.
For Kaufmann’s toy drive,
sixth-grade student Josh Hodson brought in 101 toys,
and eighth-graders Casey Price and Alyssa Smith went
door-to-door to collect $120 to buy toys.
Fifth-grade teacher Steve Arlen
made the drive more competitive by offering to shave
the back of his head with the graduation year of the
class that brought in the most toys.
“I explained to my students
that there will be a lot
of children who are much more at a disadvantage than
they are,” Arlen said. “I explained how
close we all are to being homeless or having to choose
between paying the gas bill and buying toys. They responded.
This is a wonderful district with caring parents.”
Arlen said he proudly sported
the “2011,” shaved Dec. 15, for about a
week. The eighth-grade class that won the honor brought
in 560 toys. The middle school brought in the bulk of
the donations with 1,442 toys — picking up the
slack for grades still involved in collecting for food
drives.
As a whole, the district fell
a little short of Kaufman’s original goal. However,
the final approximate count of toys donated was 1,750.
It wasn’t 2,100, but it
didn’t matter to Kaufman. It was 1,750 toys for
the Toys For Tots program. While he’s not sure
how many Toys for Tots collection bins it would take
to hold 2,100 toys, Kaufman now knows it takes about
20 to hold 1,750 — a significant number during
a holiday season that saw
a drop in donations, according to Kaufman.
“I was very optimistic
that we would be successful,” he said. “The
staff and students always seemed to come through in
the past. After we started and I realized that the other
buildings were in the midst of their other campaigns,
I was a little worried but was extremely pleased with
the outcome. That was a lot of toys.
“I think this says a lot
about our school pride,” he added. “These
kids and the teachers are always ready to jump in for
a good cause.”
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