Demopolis Middle School held its seventh annual math-a-thon to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. The students raised $2,890.53 to help the hospital that treats children with cancer, AIDS, sickle-cell anemia and other diseases.

In its seven years of participation with the math-a-thon, DMS students have raised more than $26,000 for the research hospital.

“The students have booklets, or they could go online to the Math-a-Thon for St. Jude Web site and work math problems,” said seventh-grade math teacher Geneva Howard, who coordinated the math-a-thon. “These are things that we teach every day — fractions, decimals, adding, subtracting or dividing whole numbers — as well as little fun puzzles and activities. It also has a certificate at the end that they can print out saying they have completed the math-a-thon.

“People and businesses donate money to each student for participating in the math-a-thon. We want to thank the businesses that contributed, including RockTenn, New Era, W.W. Dinning, Dr. Ronnie Chu, Dr. Rosalyn Bassett and the Demopolis Animal Clinic.”

Although each contribution was meaningful for the cause, come of the larger collectors were Jose Cardenas, who brought in $320; Megan Masters and Cassie Warren, who each brought in $125; Alex Boxmeyer, who brought in $75; and Jason Low, who brought in $50.