School For Special Needs Children Raising Scholarship Money

This Saturday, children at the Hidden Treasure Christian School in Taylors will take part in an annual event aimed at helping defray tuition costs for the special school.

Hidden Treasure is aimed at educating children with special needs, such as down syndrome, pervasive development disorders, autism, cerebral palsy and various learning and mental disabilities.

On Saturday, the 14th annual Walk Fest will be held at the school's campus at 500 West Lee Road. The  2 p.m. walk itself around the campus will be preceded by a festival starting at 10 a.m. 

"We are a school specifically for special needs. Because of high cost of tuition, we do these fundraisers to help supplement the cost of tuition to help our parents with that," said Dr. John McCormick, school administrator.

"We generally have the students send sponsor letters to folks really across the country, family members, supporters, friends across the country, and then different folks will send in pledges," McCormick.

Then, the sponsored children would take part in the walk.

But what started as a simple fundraiser walk 14 years ago is now a much bigger affair - a festival, which will feature rides, a dunking both, inflatable jump houses, a bake sale, auctions and other forms of entertainment. Tickets for each individual attraction start at 25 cents.

"I guess we've changed things up a bit. It used to be a luncheon and we'd have a 30 minute walk around campus here. What we're trying to do now is get other people from the community involved," McCormick said. "It's grown into something that is pretty large at this point. Anybody from the community who would like to come."

The Walk Fest event is a key fundraiser for the school. When it first started in the late 1990's, the walk generated $10,000 in donations. Since then, the event has raised as much as $80,000.