Gladiola Campus of Grants Pass School District #7 has been a very busy campus this 2013-2014 school year.  The greatest growth has been seen with our students and advisors in our Leadership class.  They have taken on numerous projects within our school and out in the community.

The Leadership class size has more than doubled with the number of students enrolled from last year, and this does not include the students that volunteer for projects that our school has participated in.  The two most recent projects our students and staff have sponsored were a canned food drive and litter pick-up.

The canned food drive was the week of April 7, 2014.  It was done as a class competition within the fourth period classes.  A total of 188 food items were collected with the winning class earning pizza for lunch.  The canned food was donated to Comfort Food within our district.  The director of Comfort Food, Ronda Mills, was extremely grateful for what the kids had accomplished and donated.

The other most recent activity our students participated in was a litter pick-up in the local area.  On Friday, April 25th, our students teamed up with their 6th period teacher and classmates and scoured the local area to clean-up our surroundings and give back to the community.  After the students picked up and bagged the garbage, they returned to campus for the “weigh-in”.  The class that had “bagged” the most is going to receive “campus bragging rights” for their efforts.  Mr. Miller’s class won the contest.  Our school as a whole collected 181 pounds of trash.  Our students take a lot of pride in community service projects and helping the environment with activities such as this.

Those are just two of the most recent activities our Leadership class has organized.  Other projects and activities, just to name a few, included:

  • Veteran’s Day Cards delivered to Royal Gardens, Highland House, Laurel Hill Nursing Home, and The Suites Assisted Living.

  • Sponsoring a “Christmas Child” from Riverside Elementary School.

  • Eggstravaganza Easter Egg Hunt for our student body.

  • Gladiola Garden Spring Fling fundraiser for our garden.

The last community project our students are pursuing for this school year is to help the Humane Society raise money for any needs they may have and/or volunteer to work on their site.  This is something new and will hopefully become an ongoing partnership opportunity.

The Leadership Students at Gladiola, along with their instructors, have truly taken this program to an extremely high level!  Our students are proud of their efforts and our staff is proud of the hard work and dedication the student body is putting into the 2013-2014 school year.