Very quietly (we believe) Sun Prairie's Skills USA group delivered an awe-inspiring fundraiser yesterday. On what was the hottest day of the young season yesterday, with the mercury cracking the 90 ° mark, this group tuned up lawnmowers. Led by their instructor, Mr. Chris Neff, these kids offered a complete lawn-mower tune-up and blade sharpening for a great price. All to afford the cost to travel to Kansas City for the National SkillsUSA Leadership and Skills Conference.That's right.. they didn't sell frozen pizza, or the endless array of under-utilized discount cards. They offered a valuable and practical service. Many of us are frequently too busy to attend to proper lawnmower maintenance. We think it's fair to say that at the end of a season, most of them have been ridden (or pushed) hard and put away wet. Spark plug replaced? Wait...are we supposed to replace those? Oil change and filter replacement? You mean the old rule, "if it isn't too black, too gritty, or too low, start 'er up" doesn't apply? AND a tank full of gas? All for $35 (push) or $50 (ride-on). And they even sharpened blades for $10! Who among i running with a few gouges out of the blade? Heck, parts and supplies alone can run you $15-20. And the labor, even for a pro, can run 1.5-3 hours.
SkillsUSA is a national student organization for technology and industrial education students. We "Prepare for leadership in the world of work." Sun Prairie has SkillsUSA available for students from 6th through 12th grade. SkillsUSA chapters also exist at area technical colleges across the nation. If you would like more info about SkillsUSA, visit www.skillsusa.org.We read the papers a little so we know what some folks will charge for a service like that. A little research will show you that a tune-up like that can cost $75-100. These kids did a great job, they offered the service at a very affordable price, and they furthered their education at the same time! Do you have any idea what it takes to figure out where all these things fit and how to do this stuff on a wide variety of machines? And on top of that, they did it in a pretty hot garage on a very warm day. One on which we're sure they would have liked to be elsewhere.
That's dedication, folks. And it's commitment to a team goal. Our hat is off to Mr. Neff and his students. They were looking to work on about 130 mowers to raise enough money for the trip. We don't know if they did or not, but it looked like they had at least 5 or so pages of names. We hope they were successful.
http://www.sunprairie.k12.wi.us/news_detail.cfm?newsid=84306&detailid=65547
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