School leaders take to the roof for last minute votes

School administrators from Mitchell Middle School in Racine, Pius XI High School in Milwaukee and St. Marcus Lutheran School in Milwaukee have been on the roof at St. Marcus School, 2215 N. Palmer St., since 6 a.m. Monday in a last minute effort to win more votes in the Kohl’s Care’s for kids Facebook challenge. 
In celebration of Kohl’s Corporation’s Kohl’s Cares program’s tenth anniversary the company is awarding 20 schools from around the country $10 million, or $500,000 each.
“As it goes right now, all of that money is going out of the state,” said Henry Tyson, superintendent of St Marcus Lutheran School and one of the rooftop participants. “We need all of southeastern Wisconsin to rally together in support of Wisconsin education.”
Voting ends just before midnight tonight, Tyson said.
St. Marcus is currently ranked number 35 with just over 33,000 votes; Pius High school is ranked number 33 with just over 35,000; and Mitchell Middle School in Racine is ranked 42 with nearly 23,000 votes.
The top three schools in the contest are from California and Texas, and the school ranked number 20 has more than 120,000 votes.
“At Kohl’s we are excited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our Kohl’s Cares philanthropic program by giving back to the communities that we serve. As kids and parents think about the new school year, we want everyone to dream big about how half a million dollars could impact their favorite school,” said Julie Gardner, Kohl’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “We believe that when communities thrive so does business. We feel so strongly about this program and the positive affect it could have that we have made it the cornerstone of the company’s Back-to-School campaign.”
Schools and their supporters can visit www.facebook.com/kohls and become a fan to vote for their favorite school and discuss how the funding could be used.
The winning school must serve children between kindergarten and high school and have at least one submission about how the funds might be used. Fans can vote up to 20 times for their favorite school, with a maximum of five votes for an individual school.
The top 20 schools that have completed the guidelines for the contest will be announced in late September.