Thanksgiving is a time made for giving and that’s just what Turkeys for Trojans is about. This is the third year for the drive that is dedicated to providing warm meals for FHS families who cannot afford them.

Bring in money either to your mentorship class, if you’re a freshman, or to your eleventh period teacher, for upperclassmen, to go towards the drive. If you bring in at least five dollars, you get your name on a turkey that goes on a chart under your teacher’s name.

The drive was started by Mrs. Simon in 2018 to help provide Thanksgiving meals for the FHS families who cannot afford them. Since Mrs. Simon is no longer in the building, Assistant Principal Mrs. Siebeneck, took over as the director of the drive.

“I am very lucky to be surrounded by some great people helping,” says Assistant Principal, Mrs. Siebeneck.

Señora Storey and the leadership team are helping organize this years’ drive, along with Mrs. Parsell, Mrs. Wannamacher, and Mr. Hankins.

It takes $25 to provide one meal for a family. The goal total is $3,000 and the school is currently at $2,278 as of November 13.

The highest total in years past was a little over $3,000. With the help of the generous people in our school and community, we may beat that this year.

“All of that money goes towards buying meals for our students,” says Assistant Principal, Mrs. Siebeneck.

The school’s community partner, Great Scot, is providing the meals.

“We work with [Great Scot] to determine how much a meal is going to cost and then we raise money and then what we do is buy those meals with Great Scot,” says Assistant Principal, Mrs. Siebeneck.

The community around the high school also gets involved. The Turkeys for Trojans drive is going on in Glenwood and Jacobs, along with the high school.

“This year we’re working with Flag City Clothing as well. We have a Turkeys for Trojans t-shirt that [the money raised from t-shirt sales] goes towards this campaign,” says Assistant Principal, Mrs. Siebeneck.

Mrs. Siebeneck says that she wanted to help the family that is the high school, especially with COVID and how difficult that has made it to be together, but with this drive, it’s been nice to see how everyone came together as a family to give. The Turkeys for Trojans drive is a great way to bring everyone together to work towards helping each other.

“When we went on hybrid days we had Monday-Tuesday groups and Thursday-Friday groups, and our teachers and students haven’t gotten to spend a lot of time coming together to work on a common goal,” Mrs. Siebeneck says, “So my common goal is raising funds as a family for our student families, and because I wanted us to have that common interest and working together, I’m very humbled by looking at the board and seeing all of the students’ names and all of the staff members’ names.”

Dietsch’s chocolate ice cream bars will be the reward for the class that brings in the most amount of money.

Everything collected from the drive goes directly to buying meals for students’ families, so participate if you can. You never know which one of your classmates will be affected by this drive.

Happy Thanksgiving.