ANNA GREEN

Charles Henderson Middle School is taking part in General Mills Box Tops for Education program to earn money for the school.

Forrest Lee, the physical education teacher at CHMS, has been saving Box Tops for years.

“I save them every time that they are in our kitchen. I’ll dig through the trash for them if I have to,” Lee said. “It can be aggravating to get the box tops off of the boxes, but it’s a way to contribute to your school through this hard economic time.”

With proration affecting Troy schools, Lee decided that this was the right time to try to start raising money for the middle school.

“Last year our instructional budget to buy materials for our classrooms was set at $525. This school year our budget started off at $400, and in less than two weeks it was lowered to $320,” said Lee.

“The school board is very supportive of what we do at the middle school, we are just trying to find other ways to fund things.”

The Box Tops for Education program makes it easy for the community to help their local schools.

The box tops are on a number of common household items including General Mills’ cereals, Kleenex tissue, Ziploc containers and Huggies baby products.

“Box tops are plentiful,” Lee said.

“We hope the community will collect the box tops for us and drop them off at the school office.”

The Box Tops program gives the school 10 cents per box top.

“They cut the school a check twice each year, and you can use the money for whatever the school needs,” said Lee.

“We have over 500 kids here at CHMS. If each kid brought in 2 box tops, we would earn around $100 for our school.”

Lee stressed the need for this project to be student led.

“This is going to benefit the students. The kids will have to realize that this is going to make things better for them and for those that come behind them.”

Lee has also been looking into other programs to help the school earn money.

“I’m planning on getting us involved with a program involving Campbell Soup labels,” said Lee.

“This is just a smart move for the school and for the students with proration starting to affect us.”

In addition to these programs, Lee would like to encourage the community to bring in any of their old sports equipment.

“We are looking for golf clubs, golf balls and tennis rackets. Getting old sports equipment helps us save money.”

Lee feels that there is a lesson for the kids to learn with the Box Tops for Education program.

“It’s an economic lesson. It’s the same concept of clipping out coupons and saving yourself money at the grocery store,” Lee said.

“This teaches students not only to be prudent during the tough times, but also in their day to day life.”