Witness Fitness II at Wayside Elementary raised over $10,000 for a playground for Wayside’s sister school, New Hampshire Estates Elementary in Silver Spring.
“They’re going to get something substantial,” said Lisa Katz of the Wayside PTA. “We had wonderful representation from the teachers.”
Last year, Wayside held a similar event to raise funds for their own playground equipment. This year, they decided to do something for another school in the county.
Carl Leverenz, physical education teacher at Wayside developed an obstacle course for students to do. The students at both schools spent several weeks of classtime training for the event, and collected pledges from people to raise the funds.
“The dollar amount was only one of the things we were raising,” Leverenz said. He said that the schools were also trying to raise fitness levels among students.
Leverenz said that 450 students completed the obstacle course.
Although there has been no decision about whether or not to go forward with it again next year, Katz is hoping to reach out to other schools in the county and within the Churchill Cluster. “Now that we’ve done two schools together and we know it can be done, that would really be fun,” Katz said.