First published in the Dec. 22 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
By Scott Albright
Special to the Outlook Valley Sun
La Cañada Preparatory’s student council has been as busy as Santa’s little elves this holiday season.
For Thanksgiving the group sponsored a food drive for the Los Angeles Mission Food Bank, and with the help of the entire Learning Castle and La Cañada Preparatory student and parent body, collected more than 650 pounds of nonperishable sundries for needy families.
Immediately following the Thanksgiving holiday, the student council organized the adoption of 12 Los Angeles area families through the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels Adopt-a-Family program.
“Each class in the school was assigned a family to adopt and given a list of items on their family’s wish list,” student council President Allexa Valencia said. “Our students and parents were so awesome. They took care of everything on their family’s lists and then donated a total of more than $5,000 in gift cards on top of that.”
The La Cañada Preparatory student council consists of Valencia (president), Yash Jaju (vice president), Leonna Torosyan (secretary), Melania Harutunians (treasurer), Andrew Harutunians (sergeant-at-arms) and class representatives: Katie Baker, Zoya Quereshi, Narek Hovanhannisyan, Juliana Topuzyan, Sophie Avagyan, Derek Polanco, Natalie Dawood and Celesia Kupelian.
“I am so proud of these young people,” said student council adviser Jackie Don. “I can’t remember a student council that has been this motivated to do good for their community. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.”
The Learning Castle and La Cañada Preparatory are private schools for transitional kindergarten through 8th grade located on the site of the former FIS campus at 4490 Cornishon Ave. in La Cañada Flintridge.
