Kimberly Cannon | The Valdosta Daily Times Pete Stokes from J.L. Lomax Elementary School helps Jocelyn Whitfield, 12, pick out a pair of shoes. Students with perfect attendance were rewarded with a new pair of shoes paid for by a Valdosta City Schools Partner in Education. 

VALDOSTA — One-hundred-and-two students from J.L. Lomax Elementary School are sporting new sneakers. 

Students with 100 days of perfect attendance were rewarded with a shopping trip for a free pair of new shoes from Academy Sports and Outdoors. 

The shoes are valued up to $75 each and were paid for by a Valdosta City Schools Community Partner in Education, who wishes to remain anonymous. This is the fourth year in a row the shoe shopping trip has been offered. 

Thirty-five pre-k, kindergarten and first graders and 31 fourth and fifth graders traveled to Academy Monday and 36 second and third graders went Tuesday to handpick their new shoes.  

Jessica LeFiles, J.L. Lomax school counselor, has chaperoned the shopping trip every year and said it means a great deal to the students. 

“For a lot of these kids, this will probably be the first new pair of shoes they’ve gotten this year,” she said. 

LeFiles said it is good to recognize the hard work that students and their parents put in to have perfect attendance, and she said the students get excited about the trip. 

“They’ll start asking about it the first day of school,” she said. 

She said perfect attendance decreases the chances of a student dropping out in the future and said developing good habits such as perfect attendance will benefit the children later in life.  

“We’re very proud of our students who earned the opportunity to shop,” she said. 

Zykira Mcbride, a 10-year-old fourth grader, was one of the students. This was Mcbride’s third year on the shopping trip to Academy. 

Though comfortable exploring the shelves Monday, she said the first year she felt scared, and it was her first time in the store. 

“I felt like ‘are the shoes going to be ugly? are they going to be cute?’” Mcbride said she wondered before her first trip. 

But now, she said she knows what to expect, and this year she chose a pair of Nikes. 

Brianna Jackson, a 10-year-old fourth grader, made her second trip, and like Mcbride, she said she was shy on the trip her first year.

She said she was happy to hear she would be going on the trip again this year, and said she thought the shopping trip helped encourage students to go to school every day. 

“I was happy (because) my mama won’t have to buy me another pair right now,” Jackson said. 

 

Kimberly Cannon is a Reporter with The Valdosta Daily Times. Her extension is 1376.