By Sarah Bellovich
The Brownell Beat
Brownell MS
1st Place
MS Division, News Writing
News Analysis
It is only 7:00 in the morning on November 25, 2013 but the front lawn of Brownell is already bustling with activity. Some 80 students pile onto buses that would take them into Ohio to Kalahari indoor water park. All they had to do was sell 10 magazines and it would grant them a completely paid for trip to Kalahari. The previous year about 140 kids attended the trip to Kalahari, which is about 20% of the students at Brownell!
This year when you look out on Brownell’s lawn only 40 some students will be boarding a bus to take them off school property.
With the need to cut the budget on the trip, will the annual Brownell magazine result in a loss of profit? Only about half the amount of kids will be taking the day off this year, but not at Kalahari. Now Joe Dumars is the new full day experience for selling 10 magazines. The total cost for transportation to Joe Dumars was $788 whereas for Kalahari it was $1140.
Ally Saigh, 8th grader said “ I think students wanted to work for Kalahari more because they could go with friends out of state for a day to a waterpark. But Joe Dumars is also fun and both have different things to do but Kalahari is more money to fund.”
This year Great American included incentives such as photo keepsakes, books, cards, posters, calendars, and more in an effort to boost sales. Evidently this didn’t help because the money raised, which was about 4,000 dollars, was half the amount of the total profit from last year.
This could have been due to the disappointment of students who were robbed of the opportunity to spend the entire day, free of school at a huge waterpark; that included an assortment of waterslides, a lazy river, wave pool and much more. According to Dr. Dib, another variable was the prizes offered aren’t as appealing anymore.
Dr. Dib said “Brownell has been doing the magazine sale for 30 years now and I think it has finally run its course.” The prizes this year began with a piece of chocolate per magazine sold and every Friday students could go to the main lobby and receive their bars. This small attraction was preceded by a chance to soak your teacher at lunch if a student sold 3 magazines, and if they sold five items he or she would get to pick from the cash box. The cash box included bills ranging from 1 dollar to 50 dollars. If these prizes weren’t enough, Brownell students were tempted to sell 20 magazines that would allow them a 20 second trip to the money machine.
When Chuck Colby, the Magazine organizer, announced the opportunity to spend a whole day at Joe Dumars Fieldhouse; enjoying activities such as basketball, volleyball, climbing the rock wall and laser tag, the 7th graders and 8th graders were a bit taken aback expecting him to declare the full day trip to Kalahari waterpark. Some 6th graders let out a gasp or whisper to their friends around them, clearly with intentions of taking a trip to Kalahari.
Colby claimed that this years very successful Tin Can Auction put a definite dent on the magazine sale’s profit. But two years ago the Tin Can Auction brought in a huge profit that went into rebuilding hundreds of lockers at Brownell and two years ago the magazine sale raised $12,000 compared to this year- $4,000.