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By PAUL DELANEY
Staff reporter 

Medical Lake Census project is COVID victim

Groups of high school students put Innovia grant to work helping collect data

 

Last updated 4/2/2020 at 11:25am



MEDICAL LAKE – There are many casualties of COVID-19, aside from the actual virus victims themselves.

And one of those was an effort to assist Medical Lake residents tackle the every decade chore of completing the U.S. Census.

The Innovia Foundation awarded a $10,000 grant to a variety of community entities to assist those who may not be computer savvy or have internet access. The money paid for a laptop computer at City Hall that allowed residents to do an online entry and as a fundraiser for school clubs that promoted census involvement.

Members of Medical Lake High School’s robotics club — the Circuit Breakers — as well as ASB Leadership, the Key Club and National Honor society were well on their way to completing its mission to have data collected by the July 1 deadline.

“I was looking for energetic enthusiastic people to help get the word out to our citizens and to help them, if anybody needed help,” Mayor Shirley Maike, the impetus behind the grant said.

While the efforts of the students, who were to be active in the community and offering direct assistance to residents in need of help, have been sidelined, the census itself marches on.

“Number one the census is going to go until July so they’re not thinking they need to extend it or anything,” Maike said.

Lost, but uncertain how long, will be the work of an eclectic collection of high school students — and the educational opportunity this work presented.

“These kids were seven years old, some of them five years old when the last census was conducted,” Key Club and National Honor Society advisor Kim Zappone explained. “It’s been a terrific learning thing for these kids because they didn’t really know what census was all about.”

But the effort offered a chance for students from opposite corners of the student universe to work together, Zappone explained.

“For all those clubs to combine, robotics kids you know, they are those mechanical thinking kids, the National Honor Society, they’re our super high achievers,” Zappone said.

Other elements of the project include ASB — “They’re those really outgoing kids,” Zappone said — and the Key Club who she said “tend to be the quiet kids, so this is a stretch for some of them.”

April 1 is known as Census Day in the United States, the traditional date that is used for identifying places where people live. Further information on the local Census effort can be found at http://www.spokanecensus.org.

 

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