May 22, 2017 2 min read

Conceptual Algebra students at Upper St. Clair High School are helping those less fortunate by hosting a food and clothing drive to benefit the Greater Washington County Food Bank. Nonperishable food items and new or gently used clothing items will be collected at the high school May 30-June 2 in the school’s main office or counseling center. Monetary donations for the food bank will be accepted as well.

This marks the sixth year that the Conceptual Algebra classes have participated in a food drive project.

“We link the food and clothing drive to our algebra classes by creating an algebra equation or inequality (depending which course a student is in) and graph the results daily,” said Shannon Strayer, high school math teacher. “We value all food and clothing donations at $1.25 each and with the combination of all money and food/clothing collected want to have a ‘total value’ of at least $1,000. We discuss how many more items/money needs to be donated in order to hit the goal.”

Students are assigned a variety of tasks including collecting the food, counting and sorting items and calculating the total value.

In addition to their collection efforts, students will spend a day volunteering at the Greater Washington County Food Bank where they will plant gardens and fruit trees, pack senior boxes and sort clothing at the organization’s thrift store.

Last year students collected 1,603 food items and more than $300 in monetary donations to benefit the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. This year is the first time that the groups have added the clothing component to their outreach project.