Coffee isn’t an uncommon smell at Davie. It lingers through the halls along with the smell of biscuits from the breakfast carts stationed around the school. However, a unique and new cart has emerged on the morning scene, this one run by students.
“Welcome! How can we help you?” says a cheerful yet robotic voice as you approach. A quick glance reveals the source of the pre-recorded message. It is coming from a soundboard operated by a student who stands at the cart along with his classmates. This coffee cart is run by Davie High’s Soaring Eagles. The Soaring Eagle program caters to students with special needs and with a variety of abilities. As some of them find it easier to communicate using a soundboard, this particular machine was programmed for one specific purpose: to help these students take your order and run their business.
Welcome to Soaring Sips.
This isn’t the first time that the Soaring Eagles have taken on a new project for the betterment of Davie High’s environment. In the afternoon, right after lunch, the students help the custodians at Davie High clean up the cafeteria. Small things like picking up trash and wiping down tables go a long way to make the jobs of hardworking custodians easier. This project, however, went a little further than clean-up duty.
The Soaring Sips project started with an idea from Davie High alumnus, Brooklyn Lakey. Lakey was part of the Davie SURFboard (a youth-led group under the Davie County Community Foundation) from her freshman to her senior year, and she recently applied for a grant through SURF to fund this project. For years, Lakey has worked with the special needs community because of her older sister, Annabelle Lakey, who has autism. Throughout high school, Lakey often volunteered with the Soaring Eagles as a way of helping this program and, in turn, helping her sister. Lakey says that Annabell was her inspiration for everything.
“I met with teachers at the high school within the Soaring Eagles Program and came and talked to them about what they would like, what would work best, and what they would want,” Lakey said. “I knew I wanted to do something that would benefit the Soaring Eagles, in a sense, and just give them really good life skills… creating something to allow the Soaring Eagles to get out of their classroom and kind of engage with different parts of the school and just have something like that that was theirs, that they really enjoyed doing.”
The coffee cart was born from these conversations. Using the money from her grant (around $1,500 dollars), Lakey gathered supplies, purchased the coffee cart, and gave everything to the school. From there, the goal was to let the class customize everything from there and make it their own.
Soaring Sips is open during first and second periods on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The cart is open to teachers who can make their way to the cart during their planning periods. Thanks to their cart’s mobility, Soaring Sips is never in the same spot twice; it moves around the school, sometimes winding up in the cafeteria and sometimes on the second floor during travel break. A cup of coffee at Soaring Sips costs $2.00, and teachers can choose between hot or iced coffee and between different syrups and creamers.
Rebecca Reneger, a Soaring Eagles teacher, is enthusiastic about the coffee cart and the possibilities it represents for her students and their program. She’s happy about the purpose the coffee cart serves.
“It’s to teach our students in the Soaring Eagles how to do a job and work with money and to show them what they can do with their future,” Renegar said.
Though running the cart requires a little help from teachers, many of the most important decisions are made by the students themselves.
“Our students do everything,” Renegar said, “They prepare the coffee in the classroom, and then fill up the carafes, and they also make the iced coffee, and then they pick a location, and we let the teachers know where we’re going to be so they can come and make their purchases.”
Profits from Soaring Sips are invested back into the program itself, with the money being used to purchase more items for the coffee cart. Long term, the team hopes that the money they make will allow them to expand their operation and begin selling other products, possibly food items and even hot chocolate or hot tea to accompany their coffee. If possible, they would also like to work at events with the school.
The Soaring Eagles plan to run their cart all year long. The teachers decided that this would be the best plan for educating their students on how to operate in the workforce. It kills two birds with one stone: The Soaring Eagles gain valuable work experience, and the faculty gets an opportunity to have a treat in the morning.
