Hundreds of homeless students benefit from teacher’s quiet work

MILL CREEK — What started out as one person’s low-key way to help out students in need took off when she realized how many of them were homeless.

This holiday season, hundreds of homeless students received gift cards or backpacks full of school supplies and warm clothes, courtesy of Raj Hariharan.

Hariharan has worked as a substitute teacher in the Everett School District since 2010, a position that has had her teaching all grade levels, working as a librarian or computer lab instructor and anything else that needs doing.

She’s primarily based at Woodside Elementary, where she’s such a regular presence the students all know her as Mrs. R, Principal Betty Cobbs said.

“When she’s in the building, she’s not like a sub, she’s like a regular staff member,” Cobbs said.

Hariharan also teaches Indian classical singing on the side. Her connections to the local Indian community have allowed her work as a facilitator, she said, raising money and turning it into gifts for students in need.

“I try not to use the word ‘charity’ at all,” Hariharan said. “Children, they’re just supposed to be happy.”

In her native India, Hariharan taught in a variety of schools, including with the nonprofit organization Adapt, which runs schools for children with a variety of physical and mental disabilities.

She compared herself to the demon Kabandha from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic poem. Kabandha is said to have arms that are miles long, with which it sweeps up everything and everyone to devour.

“I wanted to be a Kabandha in a different way,” she said. “If my hands could grow, and I could bring in more people.”

Hariharan came to Mill Creek 20 years ago. She has a daughter at Gateway Middle School and a son at Henry M. Jackson High School. Her husband works at Philips Healthcare in Bothell.

When she started working as a substitute teacher, she began taking up a small collection for gift cards and supplies from the families of her music students. She called her drive the Kinder Konnection Kindred Hearts Project.

“She does all this work so quietly that you wouldn’t know that she’s even doing it,” Cobbs said.

Hariharan would work with Cobbs to distribute the gifts to those students.

She would help perhaps a few dozen students each year, Hariharan said. In December 2015, 32 kids received gift cards or backpacks.

This year, after talking with some friends who run a meal program for homeless shelters in King County, she asked Anne Jensen, the counselor at Woodside, just how many homeless kids there were in the district.

The answer she got shocked her: It was more than 1,100.

“Just the numbers,” she said. “I think when you’re a teacher it really bothers you.”

The number of homeless students in the district was cumulative for the end of the 2015-2016 school year. The number actually fluctuates during the year depending on students’ circumstances, or if they move into or out of the district.

Right now there are about 800 homeless students in the district, a number similar to this time in the last school year, district spokeswoman Leanna Albrecht said.

Those students got a little extra this holiday season, totalling $4,200 in gift cards, plus hundreds of dollars worth of school supplies and clothes.

Almost all of the money was raised from the Indian community in the greater Puget Sound region, Hariharan said, who put their trust in her as a teacher.

Hariharan doesn’t know how exactly many students received a gift card. “I simply gave the supplies to the principals and counselors,” she said. “I don’t know who the kids are and I don’t want to know, either.”

In addition to Woodside, where 53 students received a gift card or supplies, students in Madison, Lowell, Hawthorne and Garfield elementary schools, Everett High School, and other students in the district through the Kids in Transition program also received help this year.

Kimberly Gilmore, the principal at Madison, said she didn’t even know about the project until Hariharan called her up this year to tell her about it. Fifteen students at Madison received a gift card.

“She’s such a kind, passionate soul, and she’s always there to do what’s best for kids, and what’s best for staff,” said Kimberly Gilmore, the principal at Madison Elementary.

“Raj put it in gear,” Cobbs said. “She went to her community, shared with them what the needs were, and they just outdid themselves this year.”

Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.