Thursday, February 9th Weiser’s Mayor, Randy Hibberd, presented a certificate and check worth $100 to nine year old Lucia Ramirez from Chrissy Mizar’s third grade class at Pioneer School.
Last fall Pioneer School held a Readers Become Leaders event where Mayor Hibberd read the book, Friends City written by Miche Kirkman & LIC Staff, to all the third graders. According to the Association of Idaho Cities page, in the story “a group of children unite to creatively solve the problems their own town faces as it grows into a city.” The Readers Become Leaders program was designed to help connect city leaders to elementary aged students as well as help create a sense of belonging to the city, introduce students to civic leadership and to teach how a city works. During this special event Mayor Hibberd brought along city workers and equipment for the third graders to learn form.
Through this program there are cash prizes available. Each third grader at Pioneer filled out an entry form that had questions such as, “What did you learn about your city that you didn’t not know about before?” and “What would you do to make your city a better place to live?”. Each entry was put into a drawing and little Lucia Ramirez’s form was drawn. Ramirez’s classmates had a lot of ideas on how the money should be spent for the classroom. Ramirez and her teacher settled on using part of the winnings to purchase more games and activities for the students to use during rainy days when the students have to stay in for recess. In case you were wondering, Ramirez answered that she felt her city would be a better place to live if there was no garbage on the ground.
Congratulations Lucia Ramirez and Mrs. Mizar’s class!
