LBI Grade School Student Council kicks off first year back since 2010 with a ‘Super Bowl Prep Rally’

Despite the New England Patriots’ win at the National Football League’s XLIX Super Bowl on Sunday, it was the Seattle Seahawks who won the “Super Bowl Prep Rally,” held at the Long Beach Island Grade School on Friday, Jan. 30.

Photo by Jack Reynolds
Student Council President Nico Leonard passes
the ball just before his opponents take him down.

The school-wide event, which included all students in third through sixth grades who competed in football-themed athletic activities, was the student council’s kickoff affair.

The school had not had a student council since 2010. The trend continued due to a lack of after-school activities following Superstorm Sandy, when school building damage forced the students to attend the Ethel A. Jacobsen Elementary School in Surf City, explained Janelle Scholey, student council adviser and a fourth-grade teacher, who helped plan the event. The LBI School reopened this past March.

To celebrate the student council’s return, the members had originally wanted to host a spirit day by having everyone wear the colors of the Patriots or Seahawks. However, “the idea got a little bit bigger,” Scholey said.

“As kids do, they said, ‘Oh, but what if we do this, and what if we added this?’ and it grew to be something really quite large,” she noted.

The event, coordinated in conjunction with the school’s superintendent and gym teacher, Karen McKeon and Sal Colino respectively, allowed students to participate in real-life math problems and team-building.

It also helped support the local area with a food collection for the St. Francis Food Pantry.

“This aspect of the event reminds LBI kids of the importance of giving back to their community,” said Scholey. “As the student council, our goal is to raise awareness and school spirit within the school, but also to give back to the community as well because we are such a small Island and everyone kind of comes from the same place.”

The students collected a total of 445 food items for the food pantry.

Some of the students “play basketball at St. Francis, and some of them go to church there. So we wanted to reach out into the community as well, especially because the kids that I have at LBI were kids that were there during Sandy,” Scholey said. “They’ve experienced help from the community, so they are really passionate about giving back.”

— Kelley Anne Essinger


This article was published in The SandPaper.