Jenks Kids Take Post-Sandy Trip to the Shore With Gifts and Song

More than 20 students from the J.S. Jenks Elementary School in Chestnut Hill loaded a school bus full of gifts on Thursday and took a trip to the shore.

Their destination was Ocean City Intermediate School, where about 60 students and a half-dozen teachers are still displaced from their homes in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, whose record flooding left widespread damage throughout the island.

The trip was the brainchild a Alice Goldsmith, a computer science teacher in the K-8 school who spends summers in Ocean City, where her father has a home.

Goldsmith knew that many Ocean City families might still be struggling to provide necessities, let alone gifts, at the time of the holidays. She and the school's students organized an effort to collect toys and money to bring to Ocean City.

"The response was bigger than we thought," Goldsmith said.

The school choir delivered the gifts on Thursday, unloading half a school bus full of toys in assembly-line fashion, taking a tour of the Intermediate School led by Student Council members, then delivering a three-song holiday concert for fourth- and fifth-graders at a special assembly.