St. John’s High School raises thousands to put on first homecoming in years

JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCBD) – After the weekend, the Johns Island and Lowcountry community came together to help out St. John’s High School .

The local high school hasn’t had a traditional homecoming dance since 2020, but this year they are bringing it back. One student on the dance’s committee took to Facebook and sent out a post hoping to make this year’s homecoming special.

“She was worried our homecoming dance wasn’t going to happen,” Erin Longshore, a teacher at St. John’s High School, said. “I think her original intention was to see if she could get a couple of things here and there for us to have really great decorations and from there it just kind of exploded.”

The response from that post allowed the school to raise over $13,000. Longshore checked her email on Saturday and shared the news with her committee members Madison Evans and Morgan Denton, who are also teachers at the school.

“Completely utter shock,” Longshore said. “I started crying when I saw all the emails on Saturday and I normally don’t check emails on Saturday, but something told me to.”

School officials said students are excited for the dance and were also surprised by the amount they fundraised. Some of the donations included buying tickets for students and others to their Amazon wish list. With the dance coming up tomorrow, students and staff on the decorating committee are continuing to prepare for the night.

“We’ve been patiently waiting for the Amazon delivery truck to show up so we can get all our packages and undo those,” Longshore said. “They’ve been able to come out of their classes do so, and we’ve been slowly decorating during lunch. And in any free time we might have, which we don’t have much, but we’ve been getting it done.”

Officials said the remaining amount of money will go towards future dances and activities, which will leave the students and staff plenty of time and resources to plan ahead. Longshore said this year’s decorations will be recycled and reused.

The dance is on Oct. 17, while the homecoming football game and parade will be on Oct. 18.

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