For the most part, hats are not allowed in school. On Friday, students and teachers from Johnsonville Elementary School were seen sporting everything from baseball hats to faux-dreadlocks, all for a good cause.
The school’s hat day was created seven years ago to help pay for the school’s student composed Safety Patrol, which does everything from hall monitoring, to helping with student pick-up at the end of school days.
To wear a hat on hat day, students pay $1, with all proceeds going to the funding of the Safety Patrol’s equipment, such as vests and badges
Randy Meekins, the assistant principal of the school, said the safety patrol, which was created by Betty Thompson, a teacher at the school, is designed to help teach students character and hat day is a way of supporting that.
“(Safety Patrol) consists mostly of fourth graders,” Meekins said. “We use the money that we get on hat day and that buys the badges and vests that they use when they monitor halls or outside sometimes.”
In its seventh year of operation, the Safety Patrol has become a something of a rite of passage at Johnsonville Elementary, with scores of fourth graders participating in the program.
Meekins said although the students that participate in the program are nearing the end of their elementary school career, those that are a part of Safety Patrol have a head start on the world of middle school.
“The program builds character,” he said. “It helps these fourth graders before they move on to middle school. It gives them some responsibility and it teaches them some life skills, like how to handle other people. It’s been a very successful program.”
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