Tigers raise 16 tons for food drive

The CFHS “Come Together” Student Food Drive came to a close on Monday. At the beginning of the drive, the school had a goal to raise 25,000 pounds of food. Leadership members of the school used a multitude of techniques to try and bring more food into the school. Along with the leadership groups, individual fifth hour classes also tried to use many approaches to bring in food.

Unfortunately, CFHS fell short of the goal with a little more than 15,000 pounds of food, but with the help of all of the other school in the Cedar Valley, the total of all of the canned food was 32,655 pounds, the equivalent of around 16 tons of food. While that is large total, all seven schools in the Cedar Valley could not reach the total set last year, which was upwards of 50,000 pounds.

CFHS counselor Erin Gardner was one of the faculty members in charge of the food drive. Overall, she said she is pleased about the food drive.

“We did well because we brought in around half of the total amount of food, but we need to focus on bringing in some more food. On the other hand, we did bring in a lot of quality food such as peanut butter, and people would rather eat that than grean beans and peas,” Gardner said.

Social Studies teacher Chad Van Cleve and his class were the fifth period champions again. They were able to bring more than 2,600 cans of food, which means that on average, each of the 28 students in the class brought in around 98 cans.

“When we discussed our goal at the beginning, we made a commitment to helping as a whole class. After that we discussed the number of cans we wanted. I believe every student brought in cans, so we met the goal of everyone participates. As we moved on during the weeks, the goal of 80 cans per student was set, and we exceeded that goal,” Van Cleave said.

Overall, the Tigers won the metro food drive contest by quite a large margin. CFHS students brought in half of all of the food in the Cedar Valley, and did so having less students than schools such as West High in Waterloo.

Gardner said that next year’s food drive can be better than ever before.

“Our students like to help other people, and we also have that competitive drive to beat our rivals. Hopefully we will bring in more food next year, while still having the same quality,” Gardner said.

She also mentioned tha students should note that if they have any ideas of how to bring in more food, or how to make collecting food more fun, they should tell their ideas to one of the faculty that is involved with the food drive.