Plymouth High School students gear up for major fundraiser during Blueberry Festival
Plymouth, Ind. –
The 52nd Annual Blueberry Festival kicks off in Marshall County on Friday. In addition to the vendors and food it brings to the area, it also brings a significant fundraiser to Plymouth High School, as it handles the official parking for the festival.
"We want to be the face of Blueberry that they see first, and we want people to have a fantastic time at this great festival," said David McKenzie, parking coordinator at the school.
Parking is $8 a day and includes tram tickets to and from the festival for all passengers. There is also disability parking available.
Since Monday, students and staff have met daily to complete Blueberry Festival parking lot training. Students have also been busy getting parking areas roped off around the school, touching up paint on signs or helping get trams ready to transport visitors from the school to the festival.
"Every time we come out here and do this we just have fun and we laugh, it's a good time," said Jacque Pratt, a senior at Plymouth High School. She’s involved in the theater department, which is just one of several programs that benefit from the parking fundraiser.
"The impact on the school is really significant because we have a lot of organizations in our school, as does ever school, that can't really sell tickets to their games or anything like that. So it's an opportunity for a lot of academic organization to raise funding to help supplement their programs and make for a better program for the kids,” said McKenzie.
The students didn’t have school Friday. Instead, many of them are preparing to volunteer for several hours parking cars or helping in other ways at the festival. But they say the extra work doesn’t take away the fun.
"It's really fun because of all the people and the activity, we get to have some fun with it. We have some years where because it's such a long shift they'll choreograph dances to park cars, and it's just a whole lot of fun out there," said Trent McKenzie, a senior at the high school.
New this year there will also be parking directly northwest of Plymouth High School in the amphitheater lot. Lincoln Jr. High School PTO will be charging cars $7 to park there. The money will go towards those students’ annual eighth grade trip to Washington D.C.