Yuma High School student council lauded for charity, community service
Yuma High School’s student council was recently awarded on the platinum level by the Arizona Association of Student Councils (AASC) for its charity and community service contributions this school year.
The highest honor attainable in the association’s award program, the platinum award required Yuma High School to organize charitable fundraisers or service projects exceeding $3,000 and over 300 hours of service time. Some of these projects included a district-wide charity dance hosted by Yuma High, a holiday toy drive and donating the school’s homecoming profits to charity.
Led by Yuma High School teacher Silvia Arellano,
this is the council’s first time receiving the AASC’s platinum level award. The school is one of 20 across the state that were commended for their charitable endeavors in the 2020-2021 school year.
“I am extremely proud of our StuCo members and feel blessed to have an amazing advisor (Arellano) to support us along the way,” said student body president Carissa Fijalkowski. “Our council has come a long way in the past four years. We went from barely attending leadership activities and doing the absolutely minimum for our school and community to not only learning how to be leaders at school, but what it means to be everyday leaders in our own lives. I’m so grateful to be a part of such an incredible organization
and to be surrounded by a group of peers who support and encourage each other.”
On a rotating basis each month, student councils from Yuma High and other YUHSD schools present a report to the district governing board showcasing their service projects and
other events and activities happening on their campuses. Yuma High School’s latest report can be viewed at the 15:00 mark of the “YUHSD Monthly Governing Board Meeting (Feb. 10)” video at www.youtube.com/YUHSD.
According to its website, www.azstuco.org, AASC
was founded by a group of educators in 1934 to encourage student leaders to practice “the democratic process, citizenship and service while fostering idea exchange and problem solving” in Arizona schools. Eight decades later, the organization’s award program serves
to recognize its member schools – including Yuma High – for their honorable efforts in these areas.
Antelope Union, Cibola, Kofa, San Luis and Yuma Catholic high schools are also AASC members, according to the organization.
AUSTIN, Texas – Many of the millions of Texans who lost power for days after a deadly winter blast overwhelmed the electric grid now have it back, but the crisis was far from over in parts of the South with many people lacking safe drinking water.
About 325,000 homes and businesses remained without power in Texas on Thursday, down from about 3 million a day earlier, though utility officials said limited rolling blackouts were still possible.
The storms also left more than 450,000 from West Virginia to Louisiana without power and 100,000 in Oregon were still enduring a week-long outage following a massive ice and snow storm.
The snow and ice moved into the Appalachians, northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, and later the Northeast as the extreme weather was blamed for the deaths of at least 56 people, with a growing toll of those who perished trying to keep warm.
In the Houston area, a family died from carbon monoxide as their car idled in their garage. A woman and her three grandchildren were killed in a fire that authorities said might have been caused by a fireplace they were using.
Utilities from Minnesota to Texas used rolling blackouts to ease strained power grids. But the remaining Texas outages were mostly weather-related, according to the state’s grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.