Family, friends and faculty of students at Redoubt Elementary School kept the fun indoors for their 4th Winter Carnival. Decking the halls with carnival sideshow décor and a host of silent auction items the event garnered a recording breaking $10,000 according to PTA carnival director Stephanie Belger. “Totally due to a lot of the community members jumping in to volunteer and help. We’ve been planning the carnival over the last three months. We have a lot of wonderful PTA members here at Redoubt Elementary and every one of them dug in and became committee members. The decorating committee dreamed up the theme for our carnival this year and really turned out terrific. They made it happen overnight Friday night with about 100 volunteers turning the school into what you see today. It wasn’t just to bolster school spirit but as you know funds are being cut this year and we wanted to do everything possible to raise some needed funds while have a lot of fun for the kids of course,” Belger told the Dispatch in an interview.

The Winter Carnival featured more games and prizes than ever before with tickets only 25 cents apiece, “We really wanted the kids to have a lot of fun and variety of games to win at. It was pretty hard for anyone to go home without a prize, we had door prizes and things you could win just for showing up this year. We also had a wide variety of silent auction baskets for our parents and supporters that spurred some spirited bidding this year,” she said. Funds will go to buy new technology to meet student needs that teach math skills with an iPod, “Technology is great today, but there are two sides to it because it is advancing so fast and staying on top of it is a challenge so that students have what they need to live and work in the world they are growing up in. As parents we must stay involved and support their learning with events such as this Winter Carnival,” said Belger.