Lisa Russell and the Student Sunshine Club at Pennridge High School have found a way to give teachers a break from the traditional workplace dress code while giving back to the community. 

Earlier in the 2020-2021 school year, students and teachers began the school week with launch days, an online version of schooling conducted over Zoom. Although the virtual aspect was challenging, the shortened classes and online instruction helped ease them into the week. Russell said, “It didn’t begin with fundraisers in mind… once we knew the schedule was switching, we were looking for an improvement.” She was searching for a way to not dread Mondays, so she brainstormed several ideas and ran them by her coworkers before making a pitch to Dr. Cashman: “If we could wear jeans… and we did it for a good cause, would you be okay with that?” It was the perfect way of combining the two ideas of helping others out and being able to dress more comfortably. 

The idea is simple. Teachers pay to dress down, each person donating a minimum of $15 to participate. The money is then divided equally and sent out. Russell organizes the Monday dress-down days, while the Sunshine Club leads the Friday dress-down days. 

The Sunshine Club is at PHS to assist people who are experiencing both fantastic and devastating conditions. They are able to help because of staff donations. These funds go to scholarships for students at the end of the year, weddings or baby announcements, or when someone loses a family member. Russell approached the Sunshine Club “for the financial aspect.” She wanted to handle the finances through a proper channel, rather than solely keeping the money and saying she would donate it herself at some point. They have held onto the money and help distribute it each week.

Initially, Russell researched organizations by herself, but other staff members quickly got involved. She created a sign-up where teachers can submit organizations, so long as they’re not religious or politically based. Russell stated, “We got really good responses… right now, we have 35 organizations on the list.” Each week she chooses an organization with a random name picker, and an email is sent to staff the week before, allowing them time to prepare their outfits. They’ve raised about $2,000 so far, had over 100 staff members involved, and have sponsored anything from the African American Museum of Bucks County to the Perkiomen watershed.

One such staff member is Tammy Rissmiller, a BC Calc and AP Statistics teacher at Pennridge who routinely participates in the dress-down days. Rissmiller has enjoyed taking part in these events and appreciates that the funds are going towards a good cause. She said, “It’s great to see how much money we make every week”, as Russell frequently releases reports to show the teachers how much they raised.  Rissmiller is enthused by the possibility of Monday dress-downs to continue next year. She likes that it brings awareness to important causes, and she thinks that “it would be nice if we could advertise more to the community,” and ultimately be able to make bigger donations to these causes. 

As for bringing it back next year, according to Russell, it would “definitely be something really cool to attempt.” She believes it is possible but doesn’t know if all staff would be on board purely due to the weekly expense. “If there’s enough support, I’d love to see it continue,” and not just for the jeans aspect. The more significant concept is that, as Russell stated, “we are in this together, we are there for each other… with our efforts, we can support a lot of organizations too.”