Photo by Peter Romano

By Peter Romano

Every year around the winter holidays, students in second-hour classes extend the holiday spirit to families in need by participating in the Adopt-A-Family program.

Teachers have the opportunity to sign their classes up to “adopt” families, whose information is provided by the Salvation Army. All the teachers and students know about the families are the ages of family members, their interests, clothing sizes and what sex they are. The families remain anonymous.

“[We] provide them a Christmas dinner, a new outfit for every member of the family and a Christmas present,” Charlie Lauts, a participating teacher, said.

Lawrence High has contributed to Adopt-A-Family since the late 1980s. It is the largest contributor to the program in Douglas County.

“I think it’s just one of those things about Lawrence High,” Lauts said. “We set a bar for ourselves very high. You know, we’ve always had to make sure we get back up there. We don’t want to go lower than what our expectations are.”

Teachers are able to band together with other classes to take care of several families.

Families in the program request gifts that the Salvation Army relays to classes. Gifts the families request include things like articles of clothing, earphones, a soccer ball and Legos.

Student Council organizes everything needed to participate in Adopt-A-Family.

“What happens is, we just talk to teachers and recruit them to adopt a family and they tell us what size they want,” said Jason Lichte, StuCo sponsor and a participating teacher. “We talk to the Salvation

Army and they

have a process to vet families to make sure the families have a real need to make sure they qualify for the assistance that we give them. They figure out the wishlist for the families and then they get that stuff back to us.”

The amount of money the program raises varies depending on the gifts that the families request. LHS alone provides for about 35 families each year.

“That’s 700 families to 1,000 families [total], depending on how many years we’ve actually done it,” Lauts said.

Lawrence High continues to be the largest contributor to Adopt-A-Family despite records showing that two in five students come from families with economic difficulties.

“I think everybody at LHS is willing to give,” senior AnnaKate Kleibohmer said. “Even if you don’t have that much, you know there’s always somebody that’s worse off than you, and I think everybody here recognizes that.”

Students consistently overcome their own economic obstacles to assist these families in need.

“If we factor in those students and families who don’t report their financial problems, we are probably looking at 50 percent of our students who are struggling,” Mike Carriger, another contributing teacher, said. “It is difficult to ask a class to give money when many of our own students will benefit from the program. You ask how our students overcome this problem and still serve as the leading contributor to Adopt-A-Family in Lawrence. I really don’t know. They find a way to make others’ lives better.”