Around 500 UFT members from Brooklyn’s District 20 — and several hundred more students and parents — turned out for the district’s annual Relay for Life event at Fort Hamilton HS in Bay Ridge on June 22.

All 38 of the schools in the district participated in the event, part of the American Cancer Society’s larger Relay for Life project, which raises much-needed funds and awareness to save lives from cancer. This year’s event raised approximately $260,000, the most ever.

Most of the schools fielded teams to walk around the track as part of the “relay” and all of them participated in fundraising by soliciting donations, holding bake sales and selling water and snacks at the event itself.

Schools also sold T-shirts that they had designed and student-decorated “luminaria” bags, each dedicated to a friend or loved one affected by cancer. The bags, which hold candles, were lined up around the track and lit, illuminating their designs, during the luminaria ceremony at the event’s end.

Larger donations from the UFT, Relay for Life and local elected officials were used to buy special educational programs from the New York Historical Society, which were then raffled to the schools. Students from the seven winning schools will either visit the historical society for their programs or will be visited by society staff in their classrooms.

The 38 schools also collaborated on a quilt composed of one panel designed by each school. The quilt will be displayed in the district office.

The event took a lot of planning, according to UFT District 20 Representative Ellen Driesen. Representatives from the schools met with Relay for Life staff several times over two months, and those schools that had participated in previous years shared tips for fundraising and outreach with schools new to the relay. Many schools also held special programs about cancer to get the word out in advance of the event.

“It’s one of the things that pull the district together,” Driesen said of the relay. “It’s an important fundraiser for kids and adults to embrace because cancer affects our community. All of us — parents and teachers as well as students — have been touched by cancer in one way or another.”