By Francisco Turrubiates, Christopher Herrera and Angel Sabater
National Night Out last week brought over 2000 visitors to see performances, visit booths, and enjoy free food served by culinary arts. For many visitors the event just seems to get bigger every year.
“I remember going to national night out my freshman year, I remember it was a decent thing, laid back with a couple people there,” junior Alex Carrizales said. “Looking back at national night out this year it was better than I remembered it to be. More people seemed to have come and be involved. Its great seeing families and students enjoy the food and games with prizes.”
According to organizers the event is indeed, growing.
“We ran out of sausages and we ordered 1750, and I know that not everyone ate so I think we did have about 2,000 visitors and that is in just 2 short hours,” organizer Christopher Cadena said.
There were more than 90 booths including 50 from the community, 31 from the school’s organizations, eight from Rackspace Hosting and six from other NEISD schools.
“I feel like it was a success I enjoy seeing all the young students nice to see our future student taking advantage of education booths” said English teacher Mary Quintanilla. “I walked around visiting other booths and students and I ate sausage on a stick.”
There were performances from dance, cheer, the Riderettes, local dance groups, and even a group zumba class. TSA fired T-shirts into the crowd from a cannon. In addition, the booths had different games and educational opportunities.
“I liked the chance to talked to students and the parents and to just talk about books and reading and everything the library offers,” said librarian Maryjane McClendon.
In the end as the sun went down, students, faculty and community members all danced to the beats put on by the DJ from Rackspace.
“The later it got the more fun it became, with the music, dancing, photo booth, and laughs,” Carrizales said. “It was a great night and I’m looking forward to next year.”
