Episode Details

Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. Students throughout Jordan School District work tirelessly in the month of December, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to help others in their annual holiday charity drives. On this episode of the Supercast, we head to Riverton High School where students are about to reveal the total amount raised during Silver Rush for their charity, the Children's Justice Center.

It is Silver Rush Day at Riverton High School, and it is one of the most exciting days of the year. Introduce yourself and tell us about what's happening today.

Katie Borgmeier:
My name is Katie Borgmeier. I am the SBO Advisor, the one kind of over all of Silver Rush.

Ella Gillespie:
And I'm Ella Gillespie, I'm the Senior Class President.

Anthony Godfrey:
And you have a water bottle strapped to you with Christmas lights taped around it. Tell us about that. And we're at the drafty front door of Riverton High School. Why is that?

Ella Gillespie:
So right now, all of us officers are standing at all the doors and we carry around these water jugs and that's how we collect our money throughout the month of December.

Anthony Godfrey:
I said water bottle, but it's a water jug, like a jug. It's the water cooler that you gather around and talk about last night's TV shows. So is this an effective method of getting cash and raising money for the cause that you've chosen?

Ella Gillespie:
I think it definitely is, especially because they're so big and everyone decorates them, they're really visual. So students, as they see us, they see the jug and they know that they want to donate.

Anthony Godfrey:
And do you think that some of them root through the change in their car and at their house so that they're prepared to give money when they walk in?

Ella Gillespie:
Oh, definitely. I know a lot of times too, we’lll go stand out in the parking lot and that's a great time to get their change because they're all just in their car, so they'll do it that way or they'll bring them during lunch. We have like penny wars and so each class is like competing to see who can bring the most change, so people get really involved with it.

Anthony Godfrey:
In other words, Riverton High School may be single-handedly responsible for eliminating the coin shortage in the United States.

Ella Gillespie:
Exactly.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Very good. Tell us a little bit about how all this got started.

Katie Borgmeier:
So when Riverton first opened back in 1999, you know, they wanted to do something different than the usual Sub for Santa. Sub for Santa is amazing, right? But they wanted to do something that could have a change and impact on the entire community. So they kind of started like, Hey, we're gonna find some sort of social issue maybe, or some sort of medical need that we can address and teach our student body and our community about that. That's a big part of Silver Rush is education. We want to educate everyone about something. So like this year we chose the Children's Justice Center, so we're teaching our community about ways to prevent it, how to help it, and just spread awareness about what abuse might look like, here's how you go about reporting it, and things like that. And every year it just gets bigger. Eve