Carson City students receive shoes

More than 400 Carson City students received new sneakers Wednesday thanks to the McKinney-Vento program and a generous donation from one local business.

The McKinney-Vento Students in Transition program collected more than 400 pairs of shoes for Carson City students in need with its Step into Spring shoe drive, with nearly 300 of those shoes donated by Big 5 Sporting Goods store. The store donated 297 pairs of new Nike, Adidas and Rebok sneakers to the program. Peggy Sweetland, program director, said this donation was extremely important for McKinney-Vento.

“This program is super important to all of our families and students because they really look forward to getting these new shoes for summer,” Sweetland said.

Big 5 stocked and delivered the 25 cases of shoes to each of the schools in the district Wednesday.

“We wanted to get all new sneakers for the kids so they can have good, sturdy shoes, so that they can participatße in P.E. class and since a lot of our kids walk to school, they need good shoes for that as well,” Sweetland said. “The new shoes really make them feel good about themselves.”

The Step into Spring event ran from mid-February to the first week of April to try to get new sneakers for the kindergarten to 12th grade students in the program.