The Shavano Academic Booster Club is a club that recognizes students for outstanding citizenship, effort and academics. Students can be nominated for a wide range of things, from helping someone if they have a bad day to doing really great work in the classroom. Students in grades K-12 are eligible to be chosen, and seniors can apply for scholarships. The organization was started by Salida High School alumni Nathan Ward. Paige Judd is the current president.

“If you’re a great student, you’re trying really hard or you’re a great citizen there aren’t a lot of public ways to acknowledge you. So the organization wants to acknowledge them publicly by putting their names and pictures in the paper,” Judd said. 

For every month of the school year, excluding the first month, eight students are nominated. How the students are nominated differs at each school building. At Longfellow Elementary School, all the teachers are asked to nominate one student a year. The Salida Middle School does it a little differently, and they have chosen to nominate students by grade level teams. Similar to LES, at SHS each teacher picks one student a year. 

In order to raise enough money to hand out scholarships and function as an organization, they rely on donations from businesses and individuals. If a teacher donates any amount, they are then eligible to apply for a small grant to buy materials for their classrooms. 

SABC has eight or nine volunteers, three of which are officers. Lots of the volunteers like to switch off roles every now and again because they find it helps every position to grow and change. 

“I think that recognizing students for things that may be overlooked is important.[…] I really like it that students are nominated by their teachers for things that can be really unusual,” said Judd. 

The SABC is a club that aims to support students and reward admirable behavior. Through their organization, they have uplifted and acknowledged countless students for commendable behavior.