News & Announcements

Hello Cheney Public Schools!

The October edition of the Community Connections district newsletter is now available! Click here or the photo below to learn more about the Cheney FFA Ag Day, district Professional Learning Day, grant presentations to local educators, and more. 

Basketball and community service are not synonymous terms, but for the Shoes 2 Play club basketball team, you cannot have one without the other. A relatively new program, Shoes 2 Play, or S2P, combines building basketball skills with building character.

Joshua Loera, head coach of S2P and a local insurance broker, has always had the desire to give back to his community. A self-described servant leader, he is one of the founders of the Love Your Neighbor Foundation, a local non-profit organization focused on making a positive impact in Spokane and neighboring communities. The idea of S2P was born about five years ago when Loera learned of a local student that lived in their car and did not have shoes.

“I went to the Nike store and bought a bunch of shoes and gave it to them,” Loera said. “From there, it just kind of turned into what it is now.”

Today, S2P is a club basketball program teaching area girls both basketball and servant leadership skills; a crossover coupled with community service. For Windsor Elementary parent and second grade teacher Kristen Myers, it was an incredible opportunity to support the growth of her daughter in more than just sports.

“I quickly realized it was more than just a basketball team,” Myers said. “[Joshua] was really supporting the character of the whole athlete, not just, ‘You’re playing basketball, and we’re here to win.’ You know, let’s build character too.”

Shoes 2 Play players have learned the importance of giving back to the community–fittingly with shoes. During the 2024-25 playing season, Myers’ daughter and the rest of the S2P then-fourth-grade girls basketball team volunteered to raise funds that went toward purchasing shoes and socks for 42 students at Windsor Elementary.

“I worked with our counselor and she emailed out to [the parents/guardians] for 42 kids,” Myers said. “We got their sizes, and then on the day of the event, we went down to Nike. I just had the kiddos’ first names, shoe size, and if they were a boy or a girl. We assigned a kiddo to each of the team members.”

The S2P players not only picked out the shoes and socks for each recipient, but they also took the time to write a personalized note to every recipient as well.

“That’s something that we really focus on with the girls’ writing is, you know, put your thought into it and really care about what you’re writing because some of these kids may keep these cards forever, and it might change their life,” Loera said. “You just never know.”

It set the expectation for the players heading into the 2025-26 playing season. Using funds raised during the previous season, the S2P program donated 50 pairs of socks and shoes to students at Sunset Elementary on September 16. Loera delivered the shoes along with a few players from the team, and the elated chorus of happy recipients echoed through the front office.

“It’s just overwhelming, to be honest,” said Sunset Principal Sara McKennon. “It’s completely overwhelming to think about the generosity that they are providing, and for students that they have no connection to…It was so moving. Definitely fighting back some tears there.”

The majority of S2P’s funds stem from the largest fundraiser for the program, the Great Pumpkinfest. It is an annual fall event that Loera began in the fall of 2020, and it spans four weekends running late September through October. Loera’s family supplies the event with thousands of pumpkins–all homegrown on his family’s farm in Moses Lake–along with facepainting, live music, dancing, and a petting zoo. It is a family-friendly event, with all proceeds going directly to charities in the local community. Players volunteer their time in shifts, helping patrons pick out pumpkins or selling raffle tickets.

“That’s where we earned a lot of the money to be able to give back to the community,” Myers said.

The S2P experience has generated multiple touchpoints for players to engage in servant leadership and community service, bringing awareness to the various levels of privilege and accessibility across the community. The excitement on both the players’ and recipients’ faces during the shoe distribution at Sunset was evident, a shared connection of happiness between kids.

“A first grader last year who received a pair of shoes is now in my class and still wears them,” Myers said. “He told me, ‘Teacher, do you know that a kid gave me these shoes?’ Kids helping each other is what this is all about.”

The September edition of Community Connections, the district's monthly newsletter, is now available. This month's edition includes a list of no school/non-student days, district notices, and a story about district fifth graders learning about servant leadership through shoes.

Click here or click the photo below to read the newsletter today!

The August edition of Community Connections is now available. Click the photo to read more!

The July Community Connections Newsletter is now available. Click here to read!