Cookies for battleships

Mike Swanson

A classroom of second-graders at the Hebrew Academy in Huntington

Beach decided Monday that lemonade and cookies could serve as key

contributors to constructing the U.S.S. New York from recycled steel

taken from the Twin Towers.

Susan McCoy’s 24-student class, part of a preschool through

12th-grade private school recently named a National Blue Ribbon

School by the U.S. Department of Education, is hoping to raise $1,000

toward the construction of a Navy assault ship named in New York’s

honor.

McCoy asked her students what changes they wanted to see from West

Coast residents as a result of their cookie and lemonade fund-raiser.

“I want to know if because they find out we’re doing this cookie

sale that maybe other people will want to do fund-raisers too,”

Natalie Landis said.

At the planning stage of the fund-raiser students broke into

groups according to their strengths -- from spelling to art to math.

Levi Goorevitch, 7, assumed a supervisory role in the spelling

group as he and his partners discussed how much they should charge

and how they could best attract buyers with a savvy use of words.

Levi adamantly suggested that the exclamation “Yo!” precede the words

“Lemonade and Cookies,” adding that lemonade should be pricier than

cookies because lemonade takes longer to consume.

“Cookies you could eat in like one bite, but lemonade, you know,

you can drink for a while,” Levi said.

The group appeared satisfied with a 25-cent price tag on each

cookie and 50 cents for each cool cup of lemonade.

The art group, meanwhile, divided into two groups -- a boy group

and a girl group -- and had opposite visions of what artwork would

attract hungry and thirsty visitors. Both, however, evidently found

cookies and brownies more inviting than lemonade.

While Molly Starobin and Rachel Gornbein elected genteel images of

cookies and brownies serenely baking in a traditional oven, Tristan

Levinson-Hayes and Noah Shohet both drew and colored detailed

fire-breathing dragons serving as nontraditional ovens.

“They’ll just burn if you do it like that,” Molly said.

In their unified vision of how to help raise money for the U.S.S.

New York, which is scheduled to be ready by 2007, students saw

different monetary amounts as being a useful contribution toward the

cause.

After hearing values as high as $1,000, McCoy settled on Talia

Shapiro’s answer of one penny.

“Imagine how much money you could raise if everyone gave just one

penny,” McCoy said.

* MIKE SWANSON covers education and crime. He can be reached at

(949) 494-4321, (714) 965-7177 or [email protected].