Coweta County Schools showed the spirit of the season by raising more than ever before for the annual Coweta County Can-A-Thon.

Coweta County students and teachers raised an estimated 197,327 cans, boxes and bags of food, or cash equivalents to the annual food drive – a record for the school system. Combined with generous contributions from elsewhere in the community, the schools’ contributions helped the drive well exceed its goal of 200,000 food items for local citizens in need.

All Coweta County schools held drives and donated to help the Newnan Junior Service League restock the Coweta County food pantry.

Ronnie Proctor and several school system operations employees spent Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving loading the crates and bags of food piled in school cafeterias and media centers.

Newnan High School prevailed this year in their annual competition with East Coweta High School to raise the most for the food drive.

Newnan High students gathered up 40,942 items, and East Coweta raised 31,072 items. The high schools’ competitive SGAs, students and staffs held cow-kissing contests and Powder Puff football games to raise over one-third of the whole school system’s total.

The middle schools also held impressive food drives. Lee Middle School raised a record 30,600 items – one class raised over 3,500 cans, and one student’s family contributed 1,000 items by themselves. Smokey Road Middle students raised 21,500 cans and Madras Middle students raised 5,812.

Among Coweta’s 18 elementary schools Northside raised the most cans – 7,585 – while Thomas Crossroads contributed 5,890, Arnco-Sargent contributed 5,649, and Newnan Crossing contributed 5,000.

The fourth grade students in Katherine Lambert’s Northside class raised the most at that school. “I didn’t bribe them” joked Lambert. “They did it on their own. We talked about why they were holding the food drive – to help people in their community – and they just did it.”