On Thursday, May 7, Morris Hills and Knolls High Schools presented to the Morris County branch of Military Family Services 1800 greeting cards that students at both schools created and designed for use by military service people who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Card language and concepts were created in English classes and sent to graphics design classes for layout. The project was funded by a grant from the Morris Hills and Morris Knolls Foundation and by contributions from both high schools’ principals.

Present to accept the cards from Family Services were Tammy Rosenthal, Director of Child and Family Services, Patrice Picard, Executive Director of Family Services of Morris County, Toni Larobino, leader of the Family Readiness group at the Dover Armory and Valerie Hart, case manager of Military Family Services outreach program.

Presenting the cards on behalf of the school district were Dr. Ernest Palestis, Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Ken Hart, District Director, English teachers (and Teacher Consultants for the National Writing Project at Rutgers University) Sara Bauer and Andrew Curtis, and graphics design teacher Fred Flake. Students who had created card concepts and language are Chetna Patel, Devin Tuzzio, Brittany Campbell, Jackie Schaefer and graphics design student,  who did the layout for all of the cards as part of her Gifted and Talented studies, Anita Sukha.

The cards will be shipped to our armed forces members so that they can send their acknowledgements home to loved ones at birthdays and other special occasions. This was part of a series of activities with which the school district has been involved  over the last couple of years that include the creation of Freedom pens and the Freedom yo-yo.