Austin area students help out hurricane victims

Published 10:44 am Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Austin High School’s Area Learning Center students have done their part.

Now, it’s the Austin community’s turn to assist them.

Derik Gustafson said the AHS ALC students collected more than 1,000 pounds — a half ton — of school supplies for an elementary school in Louisiana destroyed by Hurricane Gustav.

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“There’s a great deal of emphasis this year in the Austin school district about character building,” Gustafson said, “What this shows is how that is happening in the ALC.”

Gustafson, a social studies teacher, and Shirley Morgan, another ALC teacher, coordinated the project with the assistance of a group of ALC students.

“The idea grew out of a meeting we had at the start of the school year,” Gustafson said.

“We contacted the Louisiana state board of education to see what we could do to help hurricane victims and they matched up with the Romeville elementary school which had its roof blown off by Hurricane Gustav.”

Under the supervision of Gustafson and Morgan, the ALC students started placing coffee can donation collection containers at strategic locations throughout AHS.

They also placed boxes for the school supplies to be donated.

“It was amazing,” Gustafson said. “Before long, the donation boxes were being filled up with school supplies and the coffee cans were being filled with cash donations.”

Pencils, notebook paper, markets and other supplies for elementary school students filled the boxes to over-flowing.

Now that the project to help the Louisiana school hurricane victim is over, the ALC students have a problem.

According to Gustafson, they have no means to transport the school supplies and money to Louisiana.

Gustafson and Morgan are looking for assistance: Both financial and other.

“They students did an amazing job, and now we want to get the results of their good needs to the people who need them most of all,” Gustafson said.

Any individual or service club interested in assisting the AHS ALC students in getting the donations to Louisiana may call the ALC office 433-0940 and volunteer.