Students from pre-k to the second grade will help raise money for their school during the 19th annual Wildcat Fun Run at Smithville Elementary School on Friday, September 17th.
Dr. Bill Tanner, SES Principal, says the Fun Run is a project of the school’s PTO. “For nineteen years, Smithville Elementary along with the PTO has put on a Fun Run. We used to do this with Northside Elementary but two or three years ago Northside decided they wanted to do something else. So now we’re doing it on our own. ”
“Our PTO does the whole thing on their own. It’s called the Fun Run. Children go out and they get pledges from family members and friends for walking laps and then that money goes into a pot. The PTO sponsors some things for us. They’ve bought benches in the past. They’ve helped re-mulch the playground, bought computers, helped with our P.A. system that we have in the gym. This last year we added some cameras to our security system. We get a safety grant from the Tennessee government but it only buys cameras internally. Some of those cameras we put outside on the playground so we can keep an eye on what’s going on outside or if somebody is on campus that doesn’t need to be.”
” They (PTO) have averaged from ten to fifteen thousand dollars raised during that time (Fun Run) and it comes in handy. They buy the things that we can’t normally buy out of our (school) budget. You can’t image how much a small amount of money that they (PTO) give helps us out during the year. Two times during the year, they give the teachers one hundred to two hundred dollars to go out and buy things for their classrooms. They feed them a couple of times during the year. Maybe a child needs some clothes, or maybe a child needs some other things. They (PTO) help pay for those things. And then the big things we need around campus like benches and other odds and ends that are normally not in our budget, the PTO helps buy those things. Twice or three times a year, they pay to have somebody come in and clean up around the campus, the shrubs that’s been planted and that type of thing.”
This event is held each year in an effort to raise money for the school. Students are asked to accept pledges or donations prior to the day of the run. During the Fun Run, students walk or jog on a track with each lap being recorded for each student. After the event, the students then collect money from their pledges.
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