Student news: Shady Side Academy students form committee, raise money for local nonprofits

Shady Side Academy Middle School eighth-grader Sonia Kshirsagar created the Breckenridge Youth-Run Service Committee (BYSC) in Wexford for which she serves as chair.

On Aug. 22, she organized a multicharity neighborhood block party that benefited four local nonprofit organizations: The Free Store in Wilkinsburg, Urban Impact, Every Child Inc. and Living In Liberty.

Shady Side Academy eighth-graders Sai Chaudhry and Audrey Jiang and sixth-grader Roshan Kshirsagar are also members of the BYSC and helped with the event.

Wilkinsburg Mayor Marita Garrett and her mother, Beverly Garrett, were in attendance representing The Free Store. The two-hour event, which included covid-19 precautions, raised more than $2,000 and numerous carloads of material donations specifically requested by each charity were collected.

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Fourteen members of the Shady Side Academy Class of 2021 were named semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. The seniors will continue in the competition for 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million that will be awarded in spring.

The students are: Ishika Arora, Luke Brennan, Joshua Castro, Caroline Green, Tyler Hart, Gabriela Jegasothy, Will Karet, Andrew Liu, Zhuoxin Ma, Eve Mango, Jason Vasko, Zewei “Jason” Wu, Nicholas Zana and Qingqing Zhao.

The nationwide pool of 16,000 semifinalists represents less than 1% of the country’s high school seniors.

Six SSA seniors were named Commended Students in the program and are candidates for special corporate-sponsored scholarships. They are: Alexander Biglan, Annabel Everett, Hannah Romoff, Julia Roupe, Catherine Sparvero and Xinran “Nancy” Wang.