For the 12th consecutive year, Carrollton City Schools students rallied support for Homecoming Week’s Gold and Black Give Back campaign, collecting $20,000 in personal hygiene items to be donated to local community shelters and food banks.
“Thanks to the efforts of the entire Trojan Nation, we collected more than 14,487 bars of soap, bottles of shampoo and conditioner, toilet paper, and toothbrushes and toothpaste,” said Carrollton High School teacher Alison Hibbard, one of CHS’s homecoming organizers.
While CHS students are charged with the collection effort, each class partners with lower grades to boost its effectiveness and to raise overall community spirit districtwide.
Friendly competition between CHS classes produces an overall “class winner” each year for the most collections accumulated. This year’s junior class earned top honors along with partners Carrollton Elementary School Pre-K and third grade students and Carrollton Upper Elementary School fourth graders, who collected, collectively, a whopping 6,170 toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste. Second place was granted to the senior class and CES kindergarten, first and second grade partners. The freshman class and Carrollton Junior High School partners came in third and the sophomore class, partnered with CUES fifth and sixth graders, placed fourth.
At Monday’s Board of Education work session, Dr. Mark Albertus, superintendent, told the board the community has come to count on this annual drive to provide hygiene items.
“When we’ve reached out to our community charities about changing up the focus from year to year, they implore us to continue with the hygiene items,” he said. “They say there is a great demand year round for these items and our drive helps tremendously with keeping up with that demand.”
