Lakeview receives $500 donation for Mystic women's volunteering efforts Michael Schaffer, Daily Iowegian, Centerville, Iowa

Mar. 9-The volunteer efforts of two Mystic women has paid off in the form of a $500 donation to Lakeview Elementary School.


Cheryl Upton, Donnabell Repp's daughter, and both WalMart employees, have for several years taken advantage of the company's volunteer program. And for the past three months they both volunteered time for Mary Beth Thomas' fourth-grade class at Lakeview.


"If you volunteer 20-25 hours for the three months, WalMart donates $250 per person for that time," Upton said. "You can do it for so many quarters. January is the starting date and then it ends like in May. And then the other starting date is in September and it ends in December. And both of them quarters you can get $250 per person that works at Wal-Mart."


For Upton, she has been taking advantage of the volunteer program since her son attended kindergarten in Mystic.


"I did it in Mystic from kindergarten to third and then when he came here, I said I wasn't going to do it anymore," Upton said. "Mary Beth was my school bus driver. So, here I am again."


Now in their fifth year, they both have raised $5,000 for various schools.


The $500 donation made Thursday afternoon at Lakeview was used to pay SIEDA Headstart teacher Shawna Morgan for painting a main mural and several other motivational sayings in the hallways. She said the mural and sayings are trying to teach the children about respect.


"It's all about PBIS, Positive Behavior Interventions and Support," Morgan said. "And it's just about respecting the hallways and the school and each other and the teachers."


Morgan said the paintings took approximately 30 hours to complete. The main mural is a big white capital C with "True Reds" inserted into it surrounded by the words "Respect, "Caring," "Safety" and "Responsibility" in red. The two sayings in the hallways are, "True Reds Feel the Pulse" and "True Reds Get on Beat," and they feature a picture of a heartbeat.


Lakeview Elementary School Principal Mike Halupnick, who delivered the $500 check to Morgan, explained PBIS.


"And we'll start it next year. We have selected various areas of the school where we have behavioral problems and we're developing lessons to teach kids how to act in those particular areas," Halupnick said. "And they'll be taught when school starts."


Halupnick said the program has a system of rewards for kids who behave and it has a tracking system to see if the program is working.


"We'll have a database system that we're working with through the AEA and so we'll know whether it's working," Halupnick said. "Because we'll track the behaviors. If they go down, we know its working. And if it's not, we'll have to change it."


The message is how to be "True Reds."


"If you're a "True Red" you know respect, caring, safety and responsibility," Halupnick said.


Thanks to Morgan's artistic talents, the approximately 315 fourth- fifth- and sixth-grade students at Lake view have hallway reminders to be "True Reds."