Students Rise To Cookie Dough Sale Challenge At NMS

By Eliza Hallabeck

Just inside the doors to the lobby of Newtown Middle School on Wednesday, December 2, students gathered tightly together while parents and school staff worked to separate 1,536 tubs of cookie dough.

The annual fundraiser will make more than 73,000 cookies from the 1,500-plus tubs of cookie dough sold this year, and the proceeds will go toward funding a student trip to Washington, D.C., and Gettysburg, Penn, scheduled for later this school year. Each tub of cookie dough makes 48 cookies, and each tub sold for $13, which means NMS student sales combined raised almost $20,000 for students this year. Indivividual students earn a percentage of that total depending on how many tubs of dough each student sold.

 NMS Principal Diane Sherlock said the Cookie Dough Sale was a great experience again this year.

“All the kids either took them home on the bus, or parents came and picked them up,” said Ms Sherlock.

Ms Sherlock added some students sell so much cookie dough, they completely cover the near $500 cost of the Washington and Gettysburg field trip. The cookie dough sale, Ms Sherlock said, is amazing because it enables all of the eighth grade students the chance to cover the cost of the field trip.

“A big thank you” goes to secretary Elaine Corbo for helping make this year’s cookie dough sale a success, said Ms Sherlock.

Roughly 20 parent volunteers helped to sort and organize the cookie dough on Wednesday to be distributed to the students who sold the dough.

“Everybody just kind of pitched in,” said NMS parent Pam Gleason, who Ms Sherlock said was a large help with the Cookie Dough Sale this year.

Ms Gleason said Ms Sherlock and Ms Corbo were also a huge help with the sale.

The dough arrived at the school on an 18-wheeler truck, according to Ms Gleason, and the dough was brought into the school on pallets.

This year’s highest selling cookie dough was chocolate chip, which Ms Gleason and her family, including her eighth grade son Tommy, tried on Sunday, December 6. She said the chocolate chip cookies were “unbelievable, and so quick and easy. And it was for a good cause.”

 “They offered quite a variety,” said Ms Gleason about the cookie dough company Gourmet Cookie Dough, which supplied the dough for the sale. More information about Gourmet Cookie Dough can be found at www.crazyaboutcookies.com. Cookie dough varieties sold during the sale included sugar, peanut butter, and macadamia nut.