CHINOOK, Mont. (NMB) – Next Friday, American Garage in Chinook will be presenting 14 lucky Meadowlark Elementary students with new bikes and helmets. Owner Heather DePriest says they will give one student from each class a bike on the last day of school, which will be Friday, May 24th at 8 AM.
“To give kids something to look forward to, just as a reward for having perfect attendance. But then also, this year we changed it up a little bit so that any kid that has no behavioral referrals, meaning they haven’t gotten in trouble for anything super serious, through a quarter gets a chance to get into the bucket for a drawing for the tickets.”
DePriest says they have run this program for a few years now and First Bank of Montana is helping them this year with purchasing helmets.
“Over the years we have donated a total of 48 bikes to the program, totaling around $5,000 in donations. We started in 2016. We purchase the bikes. We generally put them together here so they’re ready to go.”
DePriest says this year, they changed the qualifications for which students get entered into the drawing to include no behavioral referrals. Missed days due to illness or a funeral also will not count against them.
