Albertsons participates with Box Tops for Education by giving you extra Box Tops for every 10 qualified items you buy in a transaction. If you buy, for example, 10 boxes of General Mills cereal the register will spit out an extra receipt called a Catalina with 10 extra Box Tops on it. You take those and register with www.growinglocallearning.com and submit the code. By picking Whitney as your school, it will send all of the Box Top Codes to our school.
This week at Albertsons was special. They have this Instant Savings Special every 6 weeks or so where you buy 10 qualified items and you save $5 total on those items and you ALSO get 25 Box Tops. Have 10 more items? You get ANOTHER $5 off AND ANOTHER 25 Box Tops. I recently discovered you DO NOT have to split the transactions to get more than 25 Box Tops per transaction. You still get your regular 10 Box Tops per 10 items as well. So, if you buy 20 qualifying items you save $10 and get (4) Catalinas from the register, (2) with 10 Box Tops and (2) with 25 Box Tops for a total of 60 Box Tops, which is $6 for the school.
For the Growing Local Learning Collection Period between March 1, 2011 and October 31, 2011 I have earned 690 Box Tops just by participating in Albertsons' program. That is $69 for the school, which Whitney will get in December. Plus, almost every item I bought with this program has at least 1 Box Top on it. And because my son eats instant mashed potatoes like they are water (I know, Idaho!) this will add up quickly.
Once you register at Growing Local Learning you can also engage in a little peer pressure and healthy competition. The site shows how much Whitney as a school has earned through the program for the same period, for the previous period and overall since the program began.
For the March 1-October 31, 2011 period Whitney has so far earned: 3184 Box Tops. That's $318.40.
Last period? (11/1/10-2/28/11)? Only 530 Box Tops
Overall? 5859.
If you have been saving your Box Tops from Albertsons and waiting to enter them, NOW is the time to enter them on Growing Local Leanring's site! They will expire at the end of the year so please please please get those entered! The money from the period ending October 31 will be mailed to the schools in the December checks.
"Hugh's" in for another big money maker story? PTO Prez, Treasurer, and Yours Truly brought home $168, with a little help from Hugh Jackman from the Scratch for Schools Idaho Lottery event October 13 at the Grove Hotel. The event required PTO President Rebecca Howard and Treasurer Teresa Abbott to scratch 300 lottery tickets like mad in an attempt to get into the final round while I screamed at them to scratch the tickets completely to reveal the bar code and all of the numbers on the ticket (there are rules to this). 82 other schools competed and while our team scratched admirably, we didn't quite make it to the finals. Okay, we didn't make it to the finals at all but we did scratch our remaining 300 tickets to reveal $168 in winnings.
Just in case you're curious, the average take for a sealed package of 300 tickets is $160. Thank you again to the Idaho Lottery who have given the Boise School District $22,361,371 since the lottery was brought back in 1989. Since 1990, the Idaho Lottery, funded through lottery sales in Idaho, has distributed $473.8 Million to Idaho, the bulk of which are public schools. In 2010, Boise School District schools received nearly $1.5 Million.
We were cheered on by our good friend Hugh Jackman. Not the man himself but his likeness on a placard. To see what I mean, you need to attend the next PTO meeting on November 13, 2011 in the Whitney Library at 3:45. The thing about the placard that I didn't think about before hand is that we walked from the parking garage in downtown Boise to the Grove Hotel with me giddily waving my sign (I don't do anything halfway). I couldn't understand why everybody was staring. At first I figured they were staring at Rebecca, our PTO Prez, she is very pretty but COME ON I'M NOT VELMA (it's a Scooby Doo reference). They were staring right above me. Then I realized it was my placard getting all of the attention. What? Hugh? I know it's Hugh Jackman but I was careful to keep it PG. It took me almost an entire week to figure it out. In Boise the "Occupy Wall Street" movement hasn't made the mainstream like other places. Agitators in Boise are met with nervous glances. I think they thought Hugh and I were taking on the 1% instead of just trying to help provide an education for the 99%.
In hindsight, given their total lack of information regarding my activities and the contents of the sign, it's no wonder they looked so nervous. You really have to see the sign to realize why it's just so strange to see a woman walkin' around downtown in a Whitney Elementary shirt waving a Hugh Jackman sign.
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