Pulaski Street School Holds "Candy For The Troops" Competition

Photos courtesy of Riverhead Central School District

With Veteran’s Day on the horizon, students at the Pulaski Street School organized and brought to a finale their two-day Halloween Candy Drive Competition by weighing and boxing up 684.4 lbs. of candy from their Halloween stash to send to deployed soldiers.

The Pulaski “Candy for the Troops” competition was initiated by 6th grader Marissa Braunreuther, whose mom, Mary Ellen, is on the Brookhaven National Labs’ Adopt-a-Platoon team. The effort was organized at Pulaski by teacher Cyndi Haverty and her 6th grade class. BNL will arrange and pay for the shipping costs to send the candy overseas and reward the winning class with a pizza party.



“I brought in ALL of my candy,” announced Marissa, the sixth grade initiator of the project who has worked with her mom on other BNL Adopt-a-Platoon efforts, “except the Jolly Ranchers, I really like Jolly Ranchers.”



Ms. Haverty’s sixth grade class not only organized the effort, but they also brought in the most candy - 140.6 lbs. This over-the-top effort brought the sixth grade total to 390.4 lbs. Michael Kanter’s fifth grade class cheerfully gave up 76 lbs. of candy for a fifth grade total of 294.0 lbs. 



“We also encouraged the teachers to have their students write letters to send along with the candy, and elementary students made and gave us cards to send along,” noted Ms. Haverty. “In an effort to reinforce some math skills, we had our students working with decimals during the weighing, tracking and graphing process.”