Eight hundred pounds of canned food. Sounds like a lot, right?

At HIES, it wasn't nearly enough.

Middle School students set a goal for their canned food drive of 800 pounds – the amount their division collected last year. They then went out and exceeded that goal by nearly 2,400 pounds (!!), collecting 3,168 pounds of food from January 26 to February 6. It took four pickup trucks to transport the donation to the Atlanta Food Bank!

The MS student council, led by sixth-graders Maddie Keith and Molly Marcus-Dower, organized the food drive. President Brian Parrish, Payton Anderson, John Gordon Hiles and Evan Gillon helped with the effort.

"The food bank was very happy to see us," says eighth-grade History teacher Gary Klingman. "For once they had goods coming in and not going out."

Maddie says no one expected to collect so many cans of food. "The (food bank) really needed the food, especially with this economy. People have slowed down their donations, and there are more people in need because of the loss of jobs," she says. "It's amazing what will happen when we all put in a little effort towards a big goal! It was so excellent to see the whole middle school working together to help out the community."

Well done, Middle Schoolers!

Sounds like yet another reason to label the HIES Middle School (as its faculty so often does) "the greatest in the universe"!