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Kaelei Whitlatch

Hi, I'm Kaelei and I'm a senior at Southmoreland. I'm a member of National Honor Society, Tri-M Music Honor Society, Concert Band, Show Choir, Highlander Choir, Musical Arts, Music Theatre club, The Future is Mine, Random Acts of Kindness, and Journalism. I love to play clarinet, write, and perform on stage. I plan to attend Robert Morris University with a major in Communications.

Latest posts by Kaelei Whitlatch (see all)

• Fox enjoying successful music career by ‘Chance’ - May 3, 2019
• Greenawalt attending state music education program - April 5, 2019
• Price, King earn full scholarships to ‘dream schools’ - April 1, 2019

As the intervention bell rings, Southmoreland students rush down the hall. Jingles of coins and whispers of, “Is the coffee shop open?” are heard. Almost every student in the school has heard of the coffee shop, but few know the story behind it.

“The coffee shop is run by learning support students and the special education department teachers,” Ms. Jean Carey said. “As special education teachers, it is required of us by the state to teach learning support students transition and job skills.”

Every day, four selected learning support students work at the shop during intervention period, and four students set up and prepare the shop for customers. There is also a clean-up staff of two to four students with two learning support teachers on site.

With a total of five coffee pots and six ovens working, the coffee shop currently sells french vanilla and pumpkin spice cappuccinos along with brownies and cookies.  They also have doughnuts available once a month and soon will offer iced coffee with a variety of flavored creamers. Each menu item sells for one dollar.

On average the shop makes about $100 per day. The money raised goes to keeping the shop open and paying for transition field trips. Last year, the coffee shop funded the send off party for science teacher Mr. Sean Cartwright’s deployment for the National Guard.

Junior Hannah Ohdonicki has been working at the coffee shop since last year.

“I handle the money and deal with the customers,” Ohdonicki said. “It’s something fun to do.”

Mrs. Carey has been with the coffee shop from the beginning.

“The most memorable day for me was opening day. We expected about 10 kids, and we had a line all the way down the hallway,” Ms. Carey said. “At that time we were running the coffee shop out of a small room on the third floor, so we really didn’t expect that many students to come. But we were pleasantly surprised when we ran out of coffee within 10 minutes of opening.”

The coffee shop is now open in the former home economics room down the hallway that branches off of the math hallway near the STEM room. It is open on most morning intervention days.