Bowie students partner with Rotary Club to fight polio

From left, Bowie PTA Hospitality Chair Beatrice Chavez, fifth-graders India Anderson, Olivia Bryant, Josie Perkins, levi Davenport, and PTA volunteer and GISD employee Michelle Brown, sorted through mounts of change Friday at Bowie Elementary. 

There’s more than a little loose change rolling around at Bowie Elementary. In fact, there are jugs full!

That’s because students have been collecting pennies – and other cash – for Pennies for Polio, a fundraiser being led by the Rotary Club of Greenville. Each grade level has been filling 5-gallon jugs with money all week.

But wait … there’s a catch that adds a little zinger to the competition. The way the scoring works, pennies are positive, and all other cash is negative. So if someone drops a nickel bill into a competitor’s jug, it eliminates five pennies, and so on. You can only imagine the damage a $10 bill does!

And where there’s a catch, there’s a strategy.

“We held onto most of our pennies until the last day so the other kids wouldn’t put a lot of silver into our jug,” fifth-grader Levi Davenport said with a sly smile. “I hope we fooled them.”

Friday, students and PTA volunteers were sorting through piles of coins and bills by grade level to take to Alliance Bank, which will conduct the official count.

“We have no idea who won at this point because with all the silver and coins, the winner could be in the negative. Who knows?” PTA Hospitality Chair Beatrice Chavez said.

Fifth-grader Josey Perkins chimed in with the most important bottom line of all:

“We are helping children with polio all around the world,” she said proudly. “That’s what matters.”

Thank you, Rotary Club of Greenville, for giving our Bowie Bulldogs the opportunity to partner with you and help other children.