Dozens of students from Lauderdale County School District’s four high schools gave up their final day of fall break Wednesday to lend a helping hand to senior citizens in their communities.

More than 150 students signed up to help with the fourth annual LCSD Day of Service, a day set aside for student volunteerism, said Andrea Williams, the school district’s director of communications. The students were all part of Career and Technical Education programs at Clarkdale, Northeast Lauderdale, Southeast Lauderdale and West Lauderdale high schools.

Day of Service is a way for the CTE students to reach out to those in the community in need of help around their house, said Denise Buckalew, who teaches health science at Clarkdale High School and is a HOSA instructor.

She was one of the faculty advisers assisting a group of students from Clarkdale’s Future Business Leaders of America, FFA and HOSA clubs Wednesday at two home sites in the community.

“We do this every year. This is our fourth annual clean-up day,” Buckalew said. “It’s just a way to give back to the community, and for our students to join together on their day off and clean up and help those in need.”

Besides the volunteer experience the students gain, she said they also benefit from interacting with the homeowners and in learning to work together as a team, and not necessarily with other students in their friend group.

“I just thought it was a nice thing to do ‘cause some people can’t do their own yard work and it is nice to help,” said Abby Mathews, who was participating as a member of Clarkdale’s FBLA organization.

She said the students also earn volunteer hours, which can go toward requirements for scholarship applications or honor programs, such as Mississippi Scholars.

Jayson Dale, of Clarkdale FAA, said he signed up to help with the community service project since he hadn’t planned to do anything on the last day of fall break anyway. It turned out to be a fun experience, he said.

During their volunteer work, Mathews, Dale and the other Clarkdale students helped a community resident who is recovering from recent hip replacement surgery with sweeping out his carport and removing cardboard boxes for garbage pickup. At a second home, they assisted a couple with trimming overgrown bushes and shrubs, raking up the cuttings, picking up fallen limbs and sticks and sprucing up flower beds.

Elsewhere around the county, Southeast High School CTE students helped a dialysis patient in the Toomsuba community with trimming overgrown bushes in her front yard and picking up the debris to place in the trash. At Northeast High, students helped a stroke survivor by cleaning out a flower bed, trimming bushes and raking leaves in her yard. West Lauderdale students assisted a retired police captain in the Martin area with sprucing up flower beds and light raking of his yard, as well as raked the yard of a senior citizen in the Collinsville community.

Said Kynlie Boles, a HOSA Club member at Clarkdale, “We are helping clean up people’s yards, just giving back to our community in ways that we can for people who can’t do it themselves.”