When North Park Elementary School third-graders were told their teacher had received a pink slip last Thursday, it didn’t take them long to decide they needed to do something about it.

“We have the best teacher in the whole school,” 8-year-old Cassidy Bensko said. “Our teachers work so hard. We want to help them out.”

“At North Park, we are like a family,” third-grader Aramis Trunnell said.

Once they left the classroom, Bensko and about a dozen of her friends and classmates decided to come up with a way to help their teacher and show their neighborhood how much they care about education.

They spent the holiday weekend organizing a donation-based lemonade stand and bake sale they held outside their school Tuesday to raise money for their teachers.

“Even though we are young, it doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference,” Bensko said as students served up lemonade and parents picked up sweets.

Saugus Union School District notified 67 of its elementary school teachers last week that they may be laid off at the end of the school year. Early notification of possible layoffs is required by law.

The district has been wrestling with a $6.5 million budget shortfall due to the state’s budget crisis.

At North Park, seven teachers were given preliminary layoff notices Thursday, parents say. At least some of them told their students about the notices before school was dismissed for the holiday weekend.

Valencia mom Micaela Bensko said her daughter Cassidy was concerned for her teacher’s job the moment she picked her up from school on Thursday.

“This was very jarring for the kids to see,” Micaela Bensko said. “No one was expecting it.”

The money raised Tuesday will be turned into gift cards for any North Park teachers who receive final layoff notices, she said. If teachers aren’t laid off this year, the students plan to donate the money to the school for school supplies.

The youngsters say they appreciate their teachers, who help them grow and spend breaks and after school making sure they understand classroom lessons.

The kids spent Friday preparing for the bake sale and creating lemonade stand posters. Over the weekend, families began making home-baked goodies to donate to the kids’ efforts.

By Tuesday afternoon, the kids had raised more than $300.

“I hope people realize that the teachers are really important to the school,” third-grader McKenna Gibson said. “The kids need teachers.”