When Island Pacific Academy teacher Luann Sackrider asked her fourth-grade class what it should do with the money collected from recycling bottles and cans, she expected her students would suggest an ice cream party.

Instead, 10-year-old Michael Brenner proposed giving the money to the nonprofit Malama Popoki, a program that traps and neuters stray cats.

Brenner's fellow fourth-graders — both in Sackrider's and Lisa Jeffers-Fabro's classes — agreed, and the students wound up collecting $342 for the program.

"It just popped into my head," Brenner said.

His class had not only been told that feral cats destroy native plants and birds, but also what happens when the Hawaiian Humane Society gets overpopulated with unwanted cats: "When they have too many at the Humane Society, they put them to sleep."

For that spirit of generosity, Disney Adventures magazine selected the school's 36 fourth-graders the top winners of a nationwide youth volunteerism contest.

The school gets $5,000 for itself while an additional $5,000 will go to the charities of the students' choice.

In selecting IPA over 2,000 other entries, Disney Adventures editor Debbie Way said, "We loved that the Island Pacific Academy students came up with a project that worked on two solutions at once — increasing recycling and reducing the feral cat population."

The generosity of the students didn't stop there, however. The fourth-graders have been going to the Waimea Valley Audubon Center to help clear streams, rip out invasive plants and propagate native plant species.

So when it came time to allocate $5,000 to charity, the students agreed unanimously to give $2,500 to Malama Popoki and $2,500 to Waimea Valley.

Fourth-grader Dustin Agbayani said he enjoys the hard work of trying to restore Waimea to its pre-human condition. "Since we can't turn back time, we can at least take the invasive plants out," he said.

The students collected cans and bottles at lunchtime from late October until mid-May, and enlisted their families to help get the containers to recycling centers on weekends, Sackrider said.

Sackrider and Jeffers-Fabro are most pleased that the students are putting to practice the school's emphasis on volunteerism and helping the environment, especially since the school only opened in the 2004-05 school year.

"The kids, after three years, are getting it," Sackrider said. "They're internalizing it. I would love to see other fourth-grade classes try to do something for the Islands, challenge them to see what they can do to put this place back to what it should be like."

Sen. Mike Gabbard, R-19th (Kapolei, Makakilo, Waikele), who dropped by the IPA campus to present a state Senate certificate honoring the two classes, said he came away amazed by the students' dedication.

"What's ... impressive is how they've taken to heart the 'malama 'aina' concept of protecting the land," Gabbard said. "It's the kind of thing we should be teaching all our young people."

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.