Students celebrate $7,314 fundraiser with pie

Feb 8, 2024

MIDDLEBORO — It turns out there is such a thing as too much pie. 

On Thursday, Feb. 8, students at the Memorial Early Childhood Center in Middleboro celebrated a successful fundraising campaign that raised over seven thousand dollars by “pieing” the faces of Principal Jeremy Gobeil, School Resource Officers Steve Valerio and Zach Porter, and Teacher Courtney Secher.

Treasure Gonzalez, the President of the MECC Parent Teacher Association, explained that every classroom was given a jar for the fundraiser and that each student contributed some amount of money to the jar. The goal of the fundraiser is to use the money to provide a free field trip for all of the students at the MECC, Gonzalez explained.

“The beauty of it is that because they’re in kindergarten, they could be putting in two pennies or a twenty dollar bill: they don’t know,” Gonzalez explained. “They just know that they are all contributing to their classroom”

“We had kiddos who would come in and say, ‘oh I found two pennies on the ground this weekend when I was shopping with my mom at the grocery store, and I saved them and I picked them up’, and they put them in the jar and they knew that they were contributing to their classroom,” Gonzales added.

On the other end of the scale was a large donation from Kathy King, a retired teacher who donated $2,500. In total, the fundraiser raised $7,314.27.

Secher’s classroom was the class that raised the most money for the fundraiser ($810.91), and as a reward, the students in her class were the ones who got to pie the four adults, including their teacher.

While other students cheered loudly, the students in Secher’s class were given plates filled with whipped cream. The students then pushed the plates of whipped cream onto the faces of the four adults, who were wearing protective clothing so that their clothes were not ruined. 

Gonzales said that the PTA was a nonprofit organization and that businesses or individuals could donate to the PTA.

“Everything goes to the kids,” Gonzales said.