This year the Buc Café was injected with some new life. “We sell what the students like, and we cleaned out the Buc Café, with a new sign and some decorations inside,” said Middle School Student Council Advisor Mrs. Corey. The renovations “… made the concession stand better and more productive in service and in serving,” according to sixth grader Molly Sullivan. The students had the help of Mrs. Corey all throughout the year and Student Council Vice President Emily Primm explained that “working with Mrs. Corey was so much fun. She helped us learn how to run our Buc Café and manage the money that we collected.” Primm encourages future middle school students to join Student Council because “of the opportunities… You get to participate in community service and running the Buc Café, which are very fun and help us learn a lot.” Nicholas Lama agreed and “would tell [middle school students] that it is a very fun way to earn community service, be with your friends, and help make our school a better place in all aspects.”

Overall, the Student Council had an extremely successful year, especially with the Buc Café. “We focused on the Buc Café this year and exceeded our expectations as well as last year’s total by earning over $4,000 this year!” said Primm. The impressive amount of money that was deposited was due to an “average [of] about $200 a week from selling bagels on Tuesdays from Bagel Boys and donuts from Chef Corp on Thursdays,” according to Mrs. Corey. “In between, we sold Rita’s ices and hot chocolate.”

The students and eighth grade officers also completed many community service projects including fundraising for UNICEF, making sandwiches and decorating cookies for the homeless, hand painting coffee mugs for each faculty member, and initiating the College Clothing Drive with Mrs. Devine’s and Mrs. Hansen’s advisories which delivered more than 30 bags of clothes for University of Central Florida students. These community service projects were only the beginning to what the hard working student council staff completed during the 2013-14 school year.

Mrs. Corey explained that “one of the goals that I set is that all the students from each grade could work together… to build self-esteem and confidence and bring us together as a community.” This year, the staff had “… a large number of sixth graders who wanted to get involved,” which accomplished Mrs. Corey’s goal to combine the students from each grade and get them to work together. “This summer I will be thinking about what we can do to top this year. It is going to be hard because we had such a successful year,” admitted Mrs. Corey.