Schools Facts

Sergeant Alvin York came home from World War I as a national hero. Hollywood wanted his story, and he said no for over 20 years. With only nine months of schooling himself, he raised money for a high school in his Tennessee mountain county and mortgaged his home twice to pay its teachers. A century after he broke ground, it still teaches the county's kids.

In 2013 Christian Bucks, a second-grader at Roundtown Elementary in York, Pennsylvania, saw a picture of a bench at a school in Germany. A child who felt lonely at recess could sit on it, and another kid would come ask them to play. He asked his principal for one, and the school put it in. Today kids in all 50 states sit on buddy benches when they need a friend.

Jalen Hurts kept hearing the same story. Philadelphia schools were sending kids home early because classrooms were too hot. So the Eagles quarterback paid to install air conditioning in ten schools himself. More than 300 units later, over 5,000 students and staff have cool classrooms. Now every touchdown he scores pays for more.

Oregon's Coast Range forest was written off as dead for good after repeated wildfires. Some believed the land was too damaged to ever grow trees again. Oregonians proved them wrong. Between 1949 and 1972, crews hand planted 72 million seedlings. Schoolchildren bused in planted nearly a million of those trees themselves. In 1973, Governor Tom McCall stood in the regrown forest and renamed it Tillamook State Forest.

Holless Wilbur Allen ran a small archery shop in Missouri. In 1966 he grabbed a hacksaw, sawed the ends off a recurve bow and bolted a pulley onto each limb. He patented it in 1969, the first compound bow. The Smithsonian keeps his patent model. More than 1.2 million students a year now learn archery on a compound bow like his, in schools across all 50 states. Bowhunters still draw one every fall.

Sandra Bullock adopted Warren Easton, a New Orleans high school that Hurricane Katrina shut for a full year. She provided band uniforms, athletic equipment and scholarship funds, and helped fund an auditorium renovation and an on-campus medical and dental clinic. In May 2014 she showed up at graduation by surprise and gave the speech to 200 seniors. About 1,150 students go there today.