Dress Down Day Fridays are regular occasions at Johnston High School, but Crazy Hat Day was a major Dress Up Day!

JHS kids made donations Tuesday to Friday.

For their donation of at least $2 they got a pin that allowed them to wear a hat on Friday. Many kids donated well over $2.

The JHS students donated a total of nearly $400.

We set up refreshments on Friday for the teachers who came over to donate. (This is pretty typical, but we had to do more than the status quo.) We had one table with Hostess Snacks (yes we had Twinkies!!!), fruits, juice & coffee, and candy for our sweet-toothed staff.

We also set up a table with toast (wheat, white, pumpernickel, rye, Italian, and English muffins) and two kinds of bagels.

In this one morning the faculty and staff donated over $300. Our total for the week was $714.

The money raised will help fund the Rachel E. Carson Scholarship.

Rachel was a senior when she unexpectedly passed on Jan. 14, 2018. She was a sweet kid that played bass clarinet in the band, wrote skits for and acted in our Friday Night Live shows, and was an exceptional student. She especially loved science, music and nature.

Her parents named her after famed ecologist Rachel E Carson.

Many of our students sang and spoke at her Celebration of Life ceremony and those same students vowed to create a scholarship in her name.

We awarded the first Rachel E. Carson Scholarship in the spring of 2019.

The Johnston School Music Association (JSMA) is the steward of the scholarship fund and continues to raise money each year to remember an incredibly kind, funny, and generous person that left us way too soon.

Editor’s Note: Ronald Lamoureux serves as Johnston High School Music Director.