Last Friday was one of those days we look forward to all year.

The St. John the Baptist Parish Public School District’s Honor Roll Roundup brings together students, staff and the entire community to celebrate the hard work and achievements of our students.

To be eligible to attend the Triple Honor Roll Celebration, students must maintain honor roll status for the first three grading periods of the school year. These are students who studied, turned in projects, did homework, passed tests and did all of the other things necessary to earn As and Bs throughout the year.

Their reward: a day of pure fun (instead of class).

Nearly 800 students earned the honor this school year.

When they disembarked from their school buses Friday morning at New Wine Christian Fellowship they were greeted by St. John Parish fire trucks and St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s deputies handing out medals and high fives.

Once inside, it was all about having a good time.

Students had the opportunity to rotate between activities including bean bag tosses, basketball, ping pong, golf, giant board games, a maze, laser tag, air hockey and face painting.

Pizza, cotton candy, snowballs and other goodies kept students fueled up for all the activities. A photo station sponsored by Marathon provided plenty of props for taking pictures that students could take home as souvenirs.

As you can imagine, putting on an event this big is no small feat and one of the best things about the Honor Roll Roundup is seeing how the community comes together for the children of St. John the Baptist Parish.

Not many places in the parish are big enough to hold 800 kids plus adult chaperones (and a snowball truck, gaming trucks, numerous game stations, etc.) and each year New Wine Christian Fellowship generously donates the use of its facility.

Marathon, which constantly goes above and beyond for our school district, did so again, providing more than 20 volunteers to assist students in addition to providing the photo station and other needed items.

Other volunteers came from throughout the school district, including the maintenance, transportation and child nutrition departments and the central office.

The St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office also provided volunteers, and the event could not have taken place without sponsors RTC, Denka, Nalco, St. John the Baptist Parish, Parish President Natalie Robottom, State Rep. Gregory Miller, State Rep. Clay Schexnayder and U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond.

And leading all of this, coordinating every detail and making sure it all came together was the District PTO and our District PTO coordinator Patricia Triche.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make this event such a huge success and congratulations to our Triple Honor Roll Champions! Keep up the good work!

Jennifer Boquet is the communications specialist for St. John the Baptist Parish Public Schools. Email her at jboquet@stjohn.k12.la.us.