Freeborn American Legion Auxiliary

Freeborn American Legion Auxiliary had its monthly meeting Feb. 17. President Sandy Anderson called the meeting to order. The pledges were recited. The secretary and treasurer’s reports were given and approved. Money was given to the Community Sewing Group for stuffing needed for the heart and neck pillows.

Results of the annual soup and pie/dessert, which was on Jan. 27, were discussed. A profit was realized due to the fact that members had donated the majority of the ingredients.

Anderson announced that the annual reports would be completed at the March meeting. All members should be gathering their information so that the reports can be completed in a timely manner.

It was necessary to increase the group’s annual dues for next year. Since the national leaders announced that they will be taking $3 more from each member next year. The annual dues will be at $23.

The Girls State and Boys State letters have been sent out to candidates.

It was announced that the Freeborn Sons of the American Legion will host a spaghetti feed from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. March 24.

With no other business, the meeting was adjourned. The next meeting will be at 9 a.m. March 17 at the Freeborn Legion Hall.

Southwest Middle School Student Council

The Southwest Middle School student council has been actively working throughout this year to improve the school. They are great leaders in our school, and are devoted to helping make the school a better place. New student council members were elected in September 2017. There are 25 members on the student council. They elected officers at the beginning of the year. The treasurers are Ella Bordeaux and Cydney Pathammavong, the secretary is Kendall Kenis, vice president is Emma Prihoda and the president is Lara Westrum. Public relations officers are Ava Bremer and Hannah Willner.

The student council loves to plan schoolwide activities. They helped organize this year’s Homecoming dress-up days and activities. They put posters up around the school and ran the assembly. The student council also organized Unity Day on Oct. 25. Unity Day was when students wore orange attire to represent our schools stand against bullying, since October is national anti-bullying month. There was a door-decorating contest held and the winning door was Burke Egner´s advisory. Each advisory also traced the students’ hands and each student wrote positive things about themselves. Then the hands were hung up on different walls in the school. All of the students signed one large poster with the word “unity” written on it, and this poster stated that the school is unified and students accept one another for who they are.

For the Southwest Middle School annual Scholastic Book Fair, the student council members had a Jolly Ranchers sale to give students a chance to win a free book. Each day there would be a flavor of the day, and students could pay a quarter to reach into a bag blindly and pick out the special Jolly Rancher for that day. If they drew it, they were given a free $10 book from the book fair. All of the Jolly Rancher sales went to buying books for Southwest Middle School classrooms. During the book fair, the student council had a small bake sale of treats they had made.

The money earned went to the student council for the Jolly Rancher expenses and other student purchases. There was another book fair at the middle school beginning Feb. 8.

One of the fundraisers that student council puts on is Penny Wars. The Penny Wars is a competition between boys, girls and staff. There were three buckets for putting money in. If you put a penny in your bucket, you gain one positive point. However, if one of the other teams puts a quarter, dollar or some other kind of money, you get the number of cents it is worth of negative points. So if someone were to put $1 in your teams bucket, you would have to put 100 pennies in to even it out. This year to promote the fundraiser in a unique way, a group of student council members put together a video of them singing parodies they wrote and dancing to them. The video was a hit, and the school reached the goal of $300 to go towards Christmas presents for a family in need! The team that won the war was the staff.

Student council has started another door-decorating contest themed winter kindness in the celebration of the movie “Wonder” that was released last November. The winners of the kindness door-decorating contest were Cathy Baumann and Mary Bissen’s advisories in sixth grade and in seventh grade they were Alissa Sauer and Laura Kuisle’s advisories. The doors look great and spread the word about kindness.

In February, the student council was scheduled to  host another fundraiser called Valentine Grams. Students will be able to purchase Valentines for $1 and write a kind short message or thank you note to a fellow student or staff member. Student council is working on another video to promote this fundraiser, since it had such an impact last time.

There was also be a book fair at Southwest from Feb. 6 through Wednesday in the Southwest Middle School Media Center.

This is just some of the things that the Southwest Middle School Student Council has been up to this year and they have many more exciting activities planned for the future.