$2K Donated To Make-A-Wish Foundation By South Huntington Middle School Students

SOUTH HUNTINGTON, NY — Stimson Middle School students are helping make wishes come true for children with critical illnesses.

Members of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Metro New York visited Stimson Middle School on Nov. 29, where the top teams in the recent Penny Wars battle presented the charity with a check for $2,000 — a big portion of the $3,395 they raised in October, the South Huntington School District announced.

Penny Wars is Stimson’s annual fundraising contest that pits homeroom against homeroom to see which one can bring in the most money — mostly loose change — plus food and hygiene items for donation to food banks. Jaime Kurnicki’s homeroom, Team 315, was the winning team for the second year in a row, raising $745.

Make-A-Wish Associate Director of Community Fundraising Caroline Ver Planck said she was blown away when she found out how much the Stimson students were donating.

"Two-thousand dollars! That's a pretty substantial donation for middle schoolers to make," Ver Planck said in a news release. "The impact is so real. The community coming together and giving can go such a long way. It's incredible what kids can do for kids."

Ver Planck and Make-A-Wish Special Events Coordinator Tara White congratulated students on a phenomenal job and thanked the entire Stimson community for their hard work. They said the donation will help the Metro New York chapter grant one of the more than 800 wishes it fulfills in the area each year.

Over the course of 15 Penny Wars, Stimson students have raised more than $58,000. The money has gone to a number of Long Island charities including Schneider’s Children’s Hospital, The Little Shelter, and the Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition just to name a few, and to fund various programs at Stimson Middle School.

Penny Wars also resulted in the collection of pounds and pounds of donated non-perishable food and hygiene products. Those items have been distributed to both the Wildcat Cares Food Pantry at Walt Whitman High School and the St. Hugh’s Food Pantry to provide food for Town of Huntington residents in need.

Assistant Principal Stephen Kellerman helped arrange the Make-A-Wish donation this year. He knows firsthand what the Make-A-Wish Foundation can do. His family was granted the wish of a trip to Disney World when his daughter was very young and being treated for a congenital heart condition. She’s doing fine now, the district said, but his family remembers all the joy that trip brought to them when they were going through a very difficult time. He sees the donation as an important lesson for the students and also for the adults around them.

"Middle school's kind of, you know, we're in the middle literally," Kellerman said. "We’re kind of the forgotten grades almost. It’s a tough age. But then in moments like this, you can see that their core values and the things that we're teaching at home and that we're trying to teach here in school, shine through in moments like this."