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Students Earn Mickey Ears

Photo by Lynne Allen

Eighty six Wimauma Elementary students and 15 chaperones took a trip to Epcot Center May 15. The trip was a reward for the group of students who helped the school an ‘A' grade the last two years.

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By JOHN CEBALLOS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 6, 2008

Updated:

WIMAUMA - When Wimauma Elementary improved its school grade from a C to an A two years ago, a lot of the credit went to the school's third-graders.

"It really was that group of students that helped to make the A possible," said Lana Saffold, the school's fifth-grade team leader.

Every year, the Florida Department of Education assigns grades to public schools based primarily on results from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test - FCAT. Schools, like students, are graded on a scale of A through F.

After earning a second A the following year, students and teachers at Wimauma Elementary are awaiting the announcement of this year's grades to see if they can make it three years in a row.

Either way, Saffold wanted to reward that particular class - now in fifth grade - before they graduated and moved on to middle school.

On May 15, 86 Wimauma Elementary students, along with 15 chaperons, took a field trip to Epcot in Orlando.

"We specifically picked Epcot because not only would it be a fun trip for the students, but it's also the most educational out of all the Disney parks," Saffold said. "The students got to see in person and touch a lot of the concepts they'd only heard about from a textbook in school."

It was a trip Saffold and the rest of the school had been preparing for since the start of the school year.

The outing was budgeted at $6,747, including transportation costs.

Since the start of the fall semester, the school raised $4,427 through individual and business donations, as well as fundraisers such as spaghetti dinners and the Spring Fling Festival in February.

That left $2,320 for the school to find to make the trip possible.

Saffold turned to the Community Foundation of Greater Sun City Center.

The organization, which serves the area south of the Alafia River, is a division of the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, an administrator of endowment funds that connects donors with philanthropic projects.

"Kids are the building blocks for the future and we like to do everything in our power to build a better community for them," said Evelyn Lunsford, chairwoman of the Sun City Center foundation on her organization's mission.

On Feb. 20, Saffold wrote a grant requesting the rest of the money necessary to make the field trip. The next month, she found out it had been accepted.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, we got it,'" Saffold said. "We're very grateful to them because we all worked very hard and they came in and gave us a third of our budget."

The trip also corresponded with the school's multicultural festivities throughout May, including the Multicultural Parade and Display on May 14 and the Multicultural Festival on May 23.

"Epcot has all those different displays for all the different cultures, and this was the first time a lot of our kids had seen those things," Saffold said. "It was also the first time a lot of them had been to Disney.

"We were very excited for them because they deserved it."

Reporter John Ceballos can be reached at (813) 865-1555 or jceballos@tampatrib.com.

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