This year, the well known event of the Penny Wars has been changed, and it’s been replaced with a new title: Coin Wars.

In previous years of the Penny Wars, students have competed with their pods to collect the most pennies for their teams. Other pods could be “bombed,” or have values subtracted from the pod’s total points, if a student from another pod were to drop dimes, nickels, and dollars into their opponent’s jar, thus thwarting their adversary’s progress. To determine the winning pod, the total value of the bigger coins and paper bills would be subtracted from the quantity of pennies collected, and the team left with the most points in the end is named the winner.

However, this system has changed for the 2017-18 school year.

Instead of repeating what has been done before, the process has been flipped. Now, the teams will each strive to compile the most dollar bills in their pods, and put dimes, nickels, and quarters into the jars of the competing pods.

Why has this happened?

Penny Wars have worked very well in the past, with enthusiastic contributions and an abundance of team spirit, but the aftermath of the Penny Wars has always been a struggle, especially for the teachers and the banks who handle the pennies that have been donated.

“Due to the impressive number of pennies that were donated by previous years’ 8th graders, we started to have a more difficult time finding banks that would cooperate with us in a timely manner to count the coins. Surprisingly banks are not that into collecting massive numbers of pennies! Not to mention that the weight of the coins were getting to be simply too much for us to deal with,” said Mr. Kevin Cuccaro, an 8th grade math teacher in the purple pod.

The Coin War will run from Nov. 13 to Nov. 17.