ShawneeDispatch.com

The Mize Elementary Hawks helped a little Hawk on Thursday.

Students at Mize collected pop tabs this year for the Ronald McDonald House in honor of Joshua ‘Hawk’ Andrewson.

Hawk, the cousin of media specialist aide Ady Carder, was born with a heart condition and his family stayed at a Ronald McDonald House when he had surgery, Carder said.

“We decided to donate the tabs in his honor,” Carder said. “He’s a Hawk and we’re the Hawks here at Mize.”

Carder said contests in each grade throughout the year built motivation for the tab drive.

The school’s goal was 247 pounds of tabs, in honor of the 24/7 reading program in which the school participates.

If students met the goal, Principal Pam Hargrove would spend 24 hours on the building’s roof.

Although the goal wasn’t met in pop tabs, students voted and decided to use the proceeds from the pencil machine to offset the remaining tabs needed.

“We figured out the price per pound of pop tabs and figured out the difference,” Carder said.

In all, the school donated $94 from the machine, putting it over its goal and sending Hargrove to the roof.

Hargrove went up around 3:30 p.m. May 6 and came down around 4 p.m. Thursday.

“I feel really blessed to work in a community that is so giving and caring,” she said. “The kids really got the community involved. There was no way we would reach the goal without that.”

Students were rewarded for their hard work in collecting tabs on Thursday.

Representative from the Kansas City Ronald McDonald House came to collect the 188 pounds of tabs. The representatives brought along a special guest, Ronald McDonald.

Students lined the circular loop in front of Mize to watch Ronald McDonald’s quick magic presentation and learn more about the Ronald McDonald House.

Hargrove told Ronald students collected tabs by getting out into the community.

Hargrove, who was on the building’s roof for the presentation, said students went to neighbors, family members and parent’s workplaces to collect the tabs.

Sara Goodburn, Ronald McDonald House volunteer, told students about the charity’s own goal for the year: to collected 5 tons of pop tabs.

“We have 112 schools participating in the Tons of Tabs Drive this year,” she said.

Carder said the support the students showed when collecting pop tabs was huge for her family.

“It means so much to my family that the school was so supportive of someone they didn’t know,” she said.

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