Sometimes you never know how events are going to turn out.  I’ve attended some events and collected one bag of school supplies but at Tuesday’s event we collected an entire barrel full and $248 from beer and raffle sales!  It was such a great way to begin the week – I wish every week started like that.  This event (it was a tapping party) allowed us to get in front of an entirely new audience who may never have heard of us before.  And hopefully, they will spread the word about our work in the community.

So thank you Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery and thank you to your patrons – you are an amazing group to work with and we hope to partner again soon!  Below are some pictures of the generous patrons who came out to support Classroom Central!

Please remember to follow us on twitter and facebook.  And as always – thank you!

The holidays are always a great time to reflect and make resolutions for the upcoming year.  I’m not a huge fan of resolutions because I always feel like I break them or maybe I’m just setting my resolutions/goals too high.  But I can say that I did make one this year that I fully intend to keep – to be true to myself.  And that’s no different than the resolution/goal we at Classroom Central strive to reach every day – being true to our mission and the students we serve.

Sure that sounds pretty easy – we’re just distributing school supplies.  But it’s much more complicated than that.  The new year always brings the opportunity to take a step back and reevaluate what you are doing and how you can do it better.  That’s what we want to do at Classroom Central this year.  We’ve been successful the past seven years doing what we do but there is so much more we can do and frankly, so many more students who need us to step up our game and think outside the box.

Loyal readers, do you have any ideas on how we can think out of the box and ultimately serve more students and provide them with the quality and quantity of supplies needed?  We are all ears and would love to hear your thoughts.

One idea we are talking about is collaborating with more agencies so we can get the supplies into our students hands that much sooner.  Also, looking at other distribution methods.  The Free Store is a great way to distribute the supplies but there are so many other ways.  Again, let us know what you think.

Thank you for helping us to level the playing field for our community’s students and giving them an opportunity to learn.

And of course – happy 2010!

I always love the saying, “Be the change you wish to see in the world” (thanks, Ghandi).  I hope that by working here, I’m being the change I want to see in the world.  However, I know it takes more than me, more than the staff at Classroom Central, it really does take all of us to make a difference.  And you can be that change agent every time you support the students we serve.

So we finally have the numbers in for the students that we will be serving this year and as soon as I heard them, I was blown away.  I remember back in the “old days” when we were serving 52 schools, this year we are serving 148.  This equates to more than 90,000 students.  I know . . . that’s a huge number.  Last year we served 119 schools and 80,000 students.  The increase amazes me.  It’s not so much that I’m surprised – the need has been increasing every year I’ve been here, but I can tell you five years ago, I never dreamt that we’d be serving more than 90,000 students in 148 schools.

I’m glad that we are here as a resource for our students but we can’t do it alone.  Now more than ever we need the support of the community to ensure our store shelves remain stocked and our students supplied with the materials they need.  There are a few ways to help: purchase holiday cards in honor of someone special in your life; donate pencils or packaged pens; join us at Panther Talk on December 14; or make a financial contribution.  Any and all help is needed.  Our School Tools donations were down this year but the need is up.  Typically the donations we receive from our back-to-school drives last us through the end of the calendar year.  This year, we haven’t been so lucky.

But more importantly we need the community to know that the need for school supplies exists year-round.  Too many people think that kids only need supplies at back-to-school time, but they forget that the package of pencils a student receives in August is now long gone and that backpack is torn with a broken zipper.

In our last post I shared with you how one of our 1st grade teacher shoppers said that on the first day of school she asked her students to take out their crayons and create a picture of their new classroom and classmates.  Only 5 out of the 18 students had crayons.

I know the need exists – I hear it from our teacher shoppers and I see it when I visit schools but there’s something about hearing only 5 out of 18 students had crayons.  I remember the smell of a brand new box of crayons and how much I loved it.  I remember begging my parents to get me the really BIG box of crayons so I could have every color imaginable.  But for the students we serve, my reality growing up is unfathomable to them.  Why should these students not have the same memories of smelling a brand new box of crayons for the first time?  They are no different than us.

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.

The teachers and volunteers they interviewed shared anecdotes of how they use the materials they are able to pick-up at the Free Store but they also shared how much their students benefit.  Hearing the stories first hand really made an impression on the NBC folks – but ultimately it reinforced everything Karen and I had told them.  Kids are kids, no matter what socioeconomic background they come from.  They want to learn, they want to succeed.  Just some kids don’t have access to basic school supplies that many of us take for granted.

I know it sounds cliche’ but I have the privilege of working at an amazing organization that is truly making a difference in the lives of our community’s children.  We can’t expect our future generations to succeed without a solid education.  And part of a solid education means having access to pens, pencils, paper and markers.  Working at Classroom Central allows me to be part of the solution; to bridge the gap between poverty and success for thousands of Charlotte area students.  I hope that everyone who supports Classroom Central feels that way too.  We are all part of the solution.

Well, myself and a few other staff members met Tony Stewart yesterday at Office Depot.  This was in conjunction with the Office Depot Foundation and their backpack program.  Office Depot has actually just distributed 2,000,000 backpacks through their backpack program that supports students in need and Tony Stewart was on hand to help celebrate this momentous occasion.  I have to give kudos to Tony Stewart-he is such a nice and personable man.  And even better, is that you can tell he really believes in bettering the lives of children.  At the event were students and organizations from around the community who were extremely excited to meet Tony, but I have to say that I think the most excited were the adults.

We had a lot of fun meeting the Office Depot Foundation (ODF) representatives, local Office Depot Store managers and of course meeting Tony Stewart.  Thank you ODF for allowing us to be a part of this great program.

Let’s hope Tony wins this weekend!!

Below are some pictures from the event.

One of the coolest things lately has been that we celebrated our 7th birthday last week.  I can’t believe it’s been seven years.  I’ve been here for almost five and our executive director has been here since the beginning.  It’s amazing to look back and see how far we’ve come!!!

To celebrate our birthday we collaborated with Carolina Pad and they donated two truckloads of school supplies to two elementary schools.  It was so much fun – we went into the schools and distributed the AWESOME school supplies to the students.

Everytime we are fortunate enough to visit the students we serve and actually see our hard work come to fruition it’s a reminder.  It’s a reminder of how bad you think your life is or how tough a situation you are going through is – it doesn’t compare to what these kids go through on a daily basis.  While we were visiting one school, we learned that one particular 2nd grade student had lost his mom about two weeks prior and his dad had just lost his job.  I know at seven I would never have even thought about losing a parent but it’s the reality for so many of our community’s children.  The amazing thing was, he was so happy and excited to see us and if we didn’t know what he was going through – you would have never known.  He was just like every kid there – happy and excited to learn!

At Classroom Central we can’t promise the world but we can provide students with the school supplies they need to succeed.  What an amazing position to be in!!