It’s the time of year for numbers. Good or bad, numbers ring as loudly as the bells of the season. How many days until Christmas break? How many hours does the turkey need to cook? How many houses does Santa Claus visit? OK, you get the idea. And speaking of numbers, this year gift cards are among the top-requested presents for the holidays. The National Retail Federation’s recent survey found that holiday shoppers plan to spend nearly $140.00 each on gift cards and that total spending on gift cards is expected to reach $23.63 billion.

Bringing that home, if every family at Stevenson Elementary chose just one $40 gift card from the Shop With Scrip program this holiday season, we would add $500 toward the fund to bring shade to the playground. And that would really help. We are one third of the way into the school year and almost one third of the way to funding the first shade structure. Now that is something we can celebrate.

Another cause for celebration – The Made In The Shade committee has secured a local dermatologist, Dr. Jeff Ashley, as a sponsor for our application to the American Academy of Dermatology’s Shade Structure Program. That’s also terrific news. But there are challenges ahead. The budget crunch has affected corporate funding and we have received a handful rejection letters on our grant proposals to date. We will continue to forge ahead with persistency, sending out more grant applications and identifying more opportunities to bring sun safety education to our families.

And we need more help. Only one in seven families at Stevenson Elementary participate in the Shop With Scrip gift card program. The escrip program, having been in place longer, boasts 56% of families participating, but there is room for improvement. Please help increase these numbers by visiting http://stevensonpirates.net/home/ffs/about-made-in-the-shade. Make sure your family is participating and offer your additional family members, in and out of town, the information they need to register their grocery and credit cards and purchase gift card in our program. It’ll go a long way toward reaching the winning number – 1 – as in the goal to construct our first shade structure in 2010.