An empty classroom was used as storage for the food drive.
CHESHIRE, Mass. — Hoosac Valley High School cares more than a ton.
Over the past week, Hoosac Valley students have brought in food for the schoolwide Hoosac Cares A Ton food drive to benefit the St. John Paul II Charity Center in Adams.
"It's amazing," Principal Jerimiah Ames said. "The students and their families really stepped up to the opportunity to give something back."
Ames said this is the first year the school took on the challenge and it was designed to work alongside the faculty United Way drive. He said they decided to aim high with a goal weight of 2,000 pounds but students surpassed this bringing in a total of 3,608.2 pounds of food.
"I am shocked, and at first I thought we were going to have to cheat," Ames said. "They started off kind of slow but as the week went on they got more and more competitive."
Students dropped off food in totes when they came to school in the morning. Ames said the Honors Society borrowed the nurse's scale every morning, weighed the food and announced the totals.
Food was literally piled into an unused classroom. Students brought in everything from canned goods to potatoes and even more than 20 turkeys.
Ames said there was a competitive edge to the drive and the class that brought in the most pounds will get to watch a movie the half day before Thanksgiving break.
The sixth grade came out as the champions with 1,141 pounds of food. The eighth grade came in a close second with 1,058.2.
Twelfth-grader Noah Matrigali said they felt it was important to make sure those without still have a good thanksgiving.
"There are people less fortunate than us, and they deserve to have a good thanksgiving and be as thankful as we are," he said. "The least we can do is give back."
Eleventh grader Hanna Koczela agreed and said the donations show how close the Adams Cheshire community is.
"I think it shows when we are given something we try to accomplish it," she said. "We understand that it is for a good cause and we can all come together."
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Adams Welcomes New Officer; Appoints Housing Authority Board Member
By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
Officer Cole Desroches recently graduated from the Police Academy.
ADAMS, Mass. — The Selectmen welcomed the newest member of the Adams Police Department, Officer Cole Desroches, on Wednesday evening.
Desroches graduated from the Police Academy on March 22 in the top tier in his class. He's currently in the field training program and assigned to Sgt. Curtis Crane. He attended Hoosac Valley High School and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
"He's going to serve and protect the town of Adams very well," said Crane, who with Sgts. Matthew Wright and Gregory Onorato stepped in to introduce the new officer while Chief R. Scott Kelley was on vacation.
"We don't often get an opportunity to kind of talk about, frankly, some of the positive things that are happening in town and one of the many things that I feel are positive with are the Adams Police Department," said Town Administrator Jay Green. "We are right now at full staff. We have a full complement of officers. We have a chief who just resigned a three-year contract. ... We have four very capable sergeants (including Donna Malloy)."
The force consists of the chief, the four sergeants, a full-time detective and 11 patrol officers. It also has a new position in Cpl. Joshua Baker who is responsible for training and keeping staff equipped.
"We're on the cutting edge of ensuring that we have proper training in a very changing environment with law enforcement," continued Green. "And we have a nice complement of officers and we have a well-respected detective who handles some very complicated cases."
He called out the half-dozen officers who attended the meeting for the work they're doing as well as the K9 unit.
Desroches graduated from the Police Academy on March 22 in the top tier in his class. He's currently in the field training program and assigned to Sgt. Curtis Crane.
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Michael Wynn, who was selected in January to run the center, submitted a level operating budget of $57,500 but said he could pull funding from different lines to ensure there was money for advertising this fall.
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The Selectmen on Wednesday night voted to award the bid to Mackin Construction Co. Inc. of Greenfield, which plans to invest $11 million to build out 20 or more one- and two-bedroom apartments in the three-story classroom wing that parallels Columbia Street.
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The Selectmen two weeks ago had requested the utility appear before the board after receiving numerous complaints over flickering lights, including in Town Hall.
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Taylor Garabedian scored a team-high 22 points and grabbed five rebounds, and Abby Scialabba scored 16 points for the ‘Canes, who got 16 points, nine rebounds and four assists from Ashlyn Lesure. click for more