PHS Alumni Showing Love to Class of 2021

The graduating class of 2021 were juniors at Pullman High School when COVID-19 hit last March. They watched the class prior to them (2020) miss out on the last 3 months of their Senior year. We all felt terrible for the Class of 2020 last year and how they missed out on so much during those final months of school. Those same students that were Juniors are now PHS Seniors and they are graduating in a couple of months. They have spent over a year of their high school years dealing with a pandemic. 

For these approximately 220 students, they have had limited sports or final senior games/meets, no theater plays, no senior prom, no senior skip, no senior choir, no graduation party, no signing yearbooks, no graduation parties with extended family and friends, and will not be able to properly say goodbye to teachers, friends and under-classmates (at least none of these things in the traditional sense). 

Last year, we joined together to support the class of 2020 and we tried to raise $3,000 and were able to triple it and raised over $9,000 from PHS alumni and people from the Pullman community. With that money, we were able to give each senior 4 gift cards to local Pullman restaurants. We also gave money to the Senior Party committee to help with their gift bags for the seniors. Normally the Senior Party funds are raised by selling concessions at games or other fundraisers that are done during the school year.  

We think it’s still our time and our Pullman prideful duty to continue to give back to our home town students and show the love from the PHS alumni. We turned last year's gofundme into a bit of a class competition, which made it more interesting. Many alumni even got creative and gave in the amount of their school year, for example $96 for an alumni of PHS 1996. 

Do we think we can pull this off again? I hope so - the Class of 2021 has had it much worse than the Class of 2020, so we are asking all former PHS classes to join together to support the Class of 2021. Here is the plan:

1) Our goal is to raise $5,000

2) The money will go towards purchasing gift cards from local Pullman businesses (Side Note: let’s help our local economy and community in the process too). The hope is that we can raise enough to provide at least $20 gift card to each student. This year Cindy Nazerali will be helping us out in getting the local restaurant gift cards. 

3) These gift cards will hopefully be given out when the students pick up their caps and gowns or if there is another mobile graduation, as there was in 2020. We will include a note with the gift card that mentions all the PHS classes that participate. 

4) Deadline for donations—in order to purchase the gift cards and get them to PHS in time, we kindly ask that all donations are made by May 15th. Please indicate your graduation class and year along with your donation in the comments. If you have another association to the students, please also let us know. If you have a son/daughter that was an alumni, we also will give your child's class credit for your donation.  

Please know that all people are welcome to donate to this cause—teachers, community members, etc. Any and all donation amounts will be accepted and appreciated—we know this is a hard time for many, but no donation amount is too small. This effort will take a village. If any community can pull this off, it’s Pullman and the alumni of PHS! Thank you in advance for rallying to support the graduates of 2021! And thank you again for all that you did last year for the Class of 2020! 

*****Special thanks and acknowledgements to Megan Vogt (Symons), Jessica Nazario (Caldwell) and Paula Moore (Faas) for being the brain trust of these creative ideas listed above. Thank you to Ranna Daud  and Nadia Daud for putting together all the gift cards last year and handing them out to the Seniors. Thank you to Elizabeth Martin for pushing us to raise more money to help the Senior Party planners and for helping us hand out cards!  Thank you to Sarah Stacey (Chandler) for being a sounding board on ideas and pushing her own class in the “competition.” Thank you to Billy Weed for being competitive and pushing his class to try to beat Class of 1996 and Class of 2000,  Special thanks to J&H Printing and Melissa Emerson for donating and creating the special card that was handed out with the gift cards. Special Thanks to all of the restaurants that also donated gift cards - Sella's, Porchlight Pizza, New Garden, South Fork, Sweet Mutiny and Rancho Viejo.***