Grant School Collects Toys For Drive

   The 700 students at Grant Elementary School are doing their part to give other children a happier Christmas by participating in the American Red Cross “Share the Holidays” Toy Drive.
   The Grant Student Council, whose members are collecting and storing the toys, is sponsoring the school’s drive. To date, the children have collected approximately 400 toys.
   Thursday morning, December 20, at 10 a.m., the Santa Monica Fire Department will drive three fire trucks onto the school playground and students will load the toys they’ve collected onto the trucks for delivery to one of the Fire Department’s collection stations.
   Grant student body president Bobby Birstock will lead the presentation of the toys, during which a Student Council representative from each of Grant’s 33 classrooms will deliver the bag of toys his or her class has collected to the firefighters.
   The entire school will attend, along with Grant principal Alan Friedenberg and representatives from the Red Cross in Santa Monica.
   All of the toys collected in the “Share the Holidays” drive will be given to children who might otherwise go without this holiday season.
   One of the schools in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, Grant Elementary School prides itself on being “a model of social, ethnic and economic diversity.