Los Altos High doubles its goal for food drive Los Altos High doubles its goal for food drive (December 02, 2005)

By Molly Tanenbaum

Los Altos High School students far surpassed their food drive goal this fall, bringing in a total of 15,822 pounds of goods to donate to Second Harvest Food Bank in time for the holidays.

"We didn't know how big it would get and it just exploded," said assistant principal Cristy Dawson.

The goal for this year was to collect between 7,000 and 7,500 pounds during the food drive that ran from Nov. 14 to Nov. 22. But the competition between second period classes resulted in some individual classrooms amassing more than 2,000 pounds each. The winner was Robert Freeman's AP economics class, with 2,673 pounds.

"It's great to see that unabated enthusiasm. It's unbelievable," Dawson said.

Dawson decided that instead of just one classroom winning a pizza party as a reward, any classroom that collected more than 1,000 pounds would win.

"With all the information with the food banks being so depleted with the hurricanes, I don't think we could have found a better cause," Dawson said.

This was the first year that the entire Mountain View-Los Altos district -- including Adult Education and Alta Vista High School --collaborated in its food drive efforts, according to Dawson. Mountain View High School collected 3,200 pounds of food and donated locally to the Community Services Agency and to Teen Challenge, said assistant principal Matt Neely.

"It was great to have this overall consciousness of everyone working together," Dawson said.

E-mail Molly Tanenbaum at mtanenbaum@mv-voice.com

E-mail a friend a link to this story.