On May 27, the President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) website turned blank. White text. Blue background. One link for questions.

“They didn’t tell us why,” Community Service director Jorge Correa said. “They just sent us a message from their website. It says the same thing. They don’t have a date.”

The PVSA recognizes students across the nation who complete a certain number of community service hours.

The school invites students and their families to be a part of this prestigious award, where they can go for either gold, silver or bronze according to their age and the number of hours they complete.

“I take tests online every year to understand what it means to be a certified organization,” Correa said. “In that test, they ask you for what the PVSA means, and we keep records and submit them. For more than two decades, we’ve been a certified organization.”

But since May 27, the award has been put on hold, likely due to significant budget cuts and staffing reductions impacting the PVSA’s mother organization.

No clear plans to bring back the award are in store.

“As soon as operations resume, everybody will be notified,” Correa said. “You can’t place any more orders until you know the regular operations resume. We cannot access our accounts. AmeriCorps took this under their wing a few years ago (and) they just moved away from the president’s office.”

Last year was the last time the PVSA could be given to students — the school had more than 20 winners, which were announced during Final Assembly.

“We were just lucky,” Correa said. “We ordered more than 100 of them this year for graduation, those were the last ones. At this point, no one can get the President Service Award. It’s like going to a store and finding no one there. And if you look again on the PVSA website, it’s the same thing that it says here.”

Due to the incentive of the PVSA, many students spent extra effort engaging in community service.

But now, students aren’t as motivated to do anything more than the bare minimum of 15 hours.

“I’m trying to think of what else we can do to recognize our volunteers,” Correa said. “There are other options; we’re just waiting to see what happens. But we can still recognize our volunteers at a school level through different organizations like Points of Light.”