Fri, Jul 18 2008
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Published May 14, 2008 06:49 pm - I was looking for some good news for a change on Tuesday afternoon, so I dialed up Livvia Seufert’s classroom in the East Newton School District. Mike Pound: Donations show students that community cares By Mike Pound
Globe columnist mpound@joplinglobe.com I was looking for some good news for a change on Tuesday afternoon, so I dialed up Livvia Seufert’s classroom in the East Newton School District. Livvia heads up the district’s gifted-students program. I wanted to check on the kids from her third- and fourth-grade class. I wanted to see if the kids had raised enough money to attend the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals in College Heights, Md. What I wanted to hear was that they had. I wanted to hear that the kids were going to get to go on their trip. But when I called Livvia’s classroom phone, I got a busy signal. I called back later and got another busy signal. And another. And another. So I gave up. I figured I could check in with Livvia on Wednesday. When I called Wednesday and got yet another a busy signal, I started to think something might be wrong (hey, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know), so I called the school district’s business office. I got a busy signal. “Aha,” I figured. “The business office and Livvia are talking to each other.” No, seriously, I figured something was definitely wrong, so I call Granby Elementary School, and the call went through. The nice woman on the other end of the phone told me that the weekend storms played havoc with the district’s telephone system. I decided to drive down to the school and chat up Livvia in person. On the drive down to the school, I began to worry. I worried that the storm also might have played havoc with the kids’ fund-raising efforts. I worried that the kids weren’t going to have that “once-in-a-lifetime experience” I wrote about two weeks ago. In the column two weeks ago, I mentioned that the kids sort of unexpectedly qualified for the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals via the state finals April 26 in Rolla. I also mentioned that to get to the world finals, the kids were going to have to raise more than $5,000 — money they and the school district didn’t have. I asked folks to consider sending Livvia’s class a donation. I also mentioned that it has been a pretty tough year for the kids in the East Newton School District. Many of the kids in Livvia’s class were friends and classmates of Rowan Ford. Rowan was taken last fall from her Stella home and murdered. Her stepfather and another man are awaiting trial. Basically what I did in the column was ask folks to brighten what has been a pretty bleak year for some good kids. Wednesday, as I drove down to talk to Livvia, I worried that maybe things didn’t go so well. I worried that, perhaps because of the weekend storms, the kids weren’t going to get to go to the finals. So when I walked into Livvia’s classroom around 1:30 Wednesday afternoon, I was relieved when she jumped out of her chair and greeted me warmly. It turns out the fund-raising efforts are going well. Livvia told me that the kids and their parents have almost reached their goal. All that is left to be raised is a little bit more money for a parent who has volunteered to serve as a chaperone on the trip. “And we’ll get that,” Livvia said. She said the kids received donations from all over the area. She said she even received a donation from a couple with whom she hadn’t had much contact since her husband died in 1989. Livvia said she was grateful and surprised that people who had never met her students, who didn’t know them, sent donations. 
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