COLUMBUS (WCMH) — One Columbus City School received a generous grant of more than $18,000 and on Sunday, teachers and staff spent their morning shopping for their kids.
According to Trevett Elementary School Principal Dr. Kiesha Fletcher-Bates, the school received a total of $18,566.08 in donations by Office Max customers.
“One of our teachers, Stephanie Ridder, the instructional coach, nominated us for the Office Max Martin Luther King Roundup and we were selected,” Fletcher-Bates said.
On Sunday, Office Max opened their doors to 10 of the school’s educators and staff to shop around before opening their doors to the general public.
“It’s amazing,” Fletcher-Bates said. “It’s almost overwhelming. The extra funding will support our students with incentives, supplies, technology. The new learning model can be challenging.”
One third-grade teacher said these kids needed supplies like books, crayons, pencil sharpeners, and pens. The pandemic has been hard on many families and meeting the full list of supplies has been hard for some parents.
“Because we’re able to get a lot of things that are going to help keep them engaged and help them wanting to come back to school,” Sierra Mathews, a third-grade teacher at Trevett Elementary, said. “It’s so hard. They’re only in school two days a week. There’s so much we have to cram in.”
One thing Fletcher-Bates really wants to focus on is having enough supplies for standardized testing that will begin this week.
“Items that can support recess like clay,” she said. “They have some fun things like Lifesavers and mints, and things like that for testing.”
Once testing is over, they want to effort buying more laptops for the kids.
“We’re looking to augment the funding to support that so that students can have the technology at home, and they can have it at school,” Fletcher-Bates said.
The money left over from Sunday’s spending will be used efficiently, Fletcher-Bates said. The school plans on meeting with its billing department to make sure everything runs smoothly, and the money is being spent wisely.
