Ralston Middle School Book Drive a Huge Success

When Annie Klups helped organize the book drive this year, she had one goal in mind – surpass the number of books that were donated by Ralston students last year.

On Monday, when Ralston ended the book drive that began on September 12th, Klups was happy to report that Ralston students had donated more than twice the number of books they had donated last school year.

“Last year, we raised 2,800 books. This year, so far, we have 6,005 books,” said Klups, who is the leader of the student government service committee.

The books collected during Ralston’s book drive were donated to the San Francisco-based nonprofit Children’s Book Project.

The Children’s Book Project collects books for underprivileged children. Their goal is to collect as many books as possible for families who can’t afford to buy books for their home libraries. 

While the increase in the number of students enrolled at Ralston was cited as a possible reason for such a large increase in the number of books collected this year, Klups feels that word of mouth may be responsible for the largest portion of the increase.   

Denise Noleroth, a teacher at Ralston and the student government adviser, wasn’t surprised by the number of books collected.

“Annie was in charge of the service committee this year,” said Noleroth. “She did a great job organizing and promoting the book drive.”

Ms. Noleroth also credited the generosity of the Ralston community for the large number of books donated.

“The kids love to do good things for others,” said Noleroth.

The book drive was organized by homeroom. For one lucky group of students, their generosity will be rewarded in more ways than one.

“We’re having a prize for the homeroom that collects the most books,” Klups said.

Noleroth said the homeroom that donated the greatest number of books will have a breakfast party to help celebrate their generosity. That party could happen as early as the end of this week.

Sara Eckles, who is also a student government member serving on the service committee, said she wanted to be part of the service committee because she knew charitable projects is a big part of what the service committee does.

“I wanted to help out other kids in need,” Eckles said.

Klups said the charitable projects and fundraisers is the reason why she wanted to be on the service committee again this year.   

Noleroth said the book drive was the first project of the school year for the service committee, but they have others they will be doing throughout the school year, including next month’s Heavenly Hats, which raises money for kids with cancer.