The best part of the summer? No school! But when school is out, the Troy City and Pike County Boards of Education as well as teachers, faculty and staff of the schools are still hard at work preparing for another upcoming academic year. Someone’s got to do it, right?

Teachers have to clean out their classrooms, redecorate and create new lesson plans for a new group of students. The boards are hunting for the best educators, principals, coaches and staff for our students to have.

Schools in our area all collect Box Tops for Education. Most of us are familiar with these small squares that appear on many items that we purchase in the grocery store. We tend to think of them on cereal boxes; however, they come on hundreds of products including canned goods, fruit snacks and even frozen vegetables. They are not hard to find. You don’t even really have to hunt them down.

Each of those Box Tops is worth 10 cents, so imagine what that can do for a school. All we have to do is save them and turn them in to the school. That’s it.

Local schools are actively collecting these box tops and are encouraging the community to save them up during the summer months. This is probably one of the easiest ways our community can support our local schools, and it barely takes an effort. Send them to school with your child when the new year begins, or spread the love throughout the schools in the area.

Ten cents may seem like a small amount that can’t do much for a school, but that’s not the case. In the 2014-2015 school year, Troy Elementary School earned $406.20 through these Box Tops and Charles Henderson Middle School earned $864. Just think of the amounts they could earn if the community joins in the effort and saves them throughout the summer.

Keep an eye out for these squares on grocery items and realize that throwing them away is literally like throwing 10 cents in the garbage.

For a full listing of the Box Top products, visit www.boxtopsforeducation.com.

Check them out. And get clipping!