It can be good but it’s also hard. We are in the middle of a change here at Classroom Central. Our executive director, Karen Calder, has left the organization to experience a new challenge. When she started over seven years ago, Classroom Central didn’t even have a building. Seven years later, with her at the helm, we’ve distributed more than $17 million in FREE school supplies to more than 80,000 students AND we OWN our building! Karen truly made Classroom Central what it is today. That’s why it is hard to see her leave but sometimes it’s time for a new challenge and when one is presented to you, you don’t turn it down.
I can promise to all those faithful blog readers that we as a staff and board are fully committed to ensuring that Classroom Central remains strong. The need in our community is too great for us not to work the hardest we can to ensure students have the necessary school supplies.
Some of you may have read the article in the Charlotte Observer about how CMS now has 51% of their students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. When you read more you learn that 19 out of 171 schools have poverty levels over 90%. Yet there is one school out there with a poverty level of 2%. How does that seem right and how can we create equity in our schools?
That’s where Classroom Central and YOU come in. As an organization we are here to help level the playing field and ensure students have the materials they need. But we can’t do that without YOUR support. The more supplies we have, the more supplies we can distribute to our teachers and their students. The more dollars we raise, the more supplies we can purchase when supply donations run low.
Try to remember back to when you were in school. When you ran out of paper or your pencil broke, your teacher just handed you more paper or another pencil. I know I never thought twice about where the paper or pencil came from but teachers were buying them, taking money out of their own pockets to ensure their students had what they (we) needed. This hasn’t changed. Teachers spend on average $1200 on supplies to stock their classroom and supply their students. That’s a lot of money for a not so great paying (monetarily speaking) job. Their rewards come in many other ways – seeing a child succeed and knowing that they’ve helped them get to that point.
But with the need increasing in our community, more and more students are showing up completely empty-handed. When talking with a 1st grade teacher at Statesville Road Elementary she told me that only 5 out of her 18 students came to school with crayons. For a first grader not to have crayons is like us not having a computer or phone to do our work. How can we expect future generations to succeed when they don’t have basic materials like crayons?
I can continue on with many more examples but I won’t, at least not in this post. However, I do encourage you to read the Observer article: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/topstories/story/1063669.html.
