(03/11/2025) At the beginning of each school year, Brookside Elementary School teachers organize a student council to provide students with a leadership opportunity and a voice in decision-making at their school. 

Each year, the student council leads a service project for students and the community to support a local organization. This year, students organized a donation drive for the Gillette Children’s Infusion Center.

Gillette Children’s focuses on some of the toughest challenges in pediatric medicine, caring for brain, bone and movement conditions needing specialized expertise. Children, just like Brookside third-grade student Holli Harter, typically spend long hours at Gillette while being cared for, and having items to help pass the time is beneficial for children. 

Harter has been a Gillette patient since 2017 receiving treatment for osteogenesis imperfecta — also known as brittle bone disease — and helped organize the donation drive as a member of the Brookside Student Council.

“To our Brookside Elementary community, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your kindness and generosity in supporting the Gillette Children’s Infusion Center. Your donations will make a meaningful difference for so many children. It means the world to our family to be part of such a caring and compassionate community.” - the Harter family. 

The school community collected eight boxes of items to donate in less than two weeks, including four boxes of DVDs and video games and another four boxes of items from the Infusion Center’s Target and Amazon wish lists. 

The Brookside Student Council was created to provide student leadership opportunities at the school and is led by second grade teacher Julia Stock, third grade teacher Cindy Houle and fifth grade teacher Peter Driessen. The council meets monthly and is comprised of 30 third through fifth grade students. The student council is involved in planning and helping communicate spirit days, pop-up shops and other special events and projects.