EVERETT — The big yellow school buses parked at local stores over the weekend had no room left for children.
Instead, the seats were filled with boxes of notebook paper, bags of pencils and piles of backpacks.
The sixth annual Stuff the Bus for Kids event gathered thousands of donations for children in the Everett School District whose families can’t afford school supplies. The Everett Public Schools Foundation sponsored the event and relied on help from volunteers, including teachers, bus drivers and Boeing employees. They set a goal of collecting 1,700 backpacks and enough supplies to fill all of them.
On Sunday afternoon, the last day of the three-day donation drive at Fred Meyer and QFC stores in the Everett area, volunteers were optimistic they would meet their goal. They plan to take a final tally later this week after picking up donation barrels set up at local businesses and banks.
“It’s been amazing. Just amazing,” said Willie Sandygren, a paraeducator at Jackson High School who volunteered Sunday at the Fred Meyer on 132nd Street in Mill Creek. “People have been so generous and some absolutely eager to help.”
She handed out lists near the store’s front door: backpacks, scissors, notebooks, crayons, glue sticks, highlighters, pencils and more. People came out with bags full of supplies and dropped them off in shopping carts to be wheeled over to the bus.
Sandygren knows how much the donations mean to students and how important it is to stuff the bus as full as possible.
“You see the kids and their faces when they come in and they don’t have what they need,” she said. “Just one of those little faces would break your heart.”
Volunteers plan to sort supplies and stuff the backpacks next week before delivering them to schools starting Aug. 24, said Guy Shanks, general manager for Durham School Services, which provides school bus service in the Everett School District.
The donations are for all ages, from kindergartners to high school seniors. The needs are different for elementary, middle and high school classes, so volunteers plan to divvy the donated supplies up accordingly and label the backpacks for each age group.
“This is an easy way for people to be involved in the community and help where the need really is,” Shanks said.
Volunteers were at four locations this weekend: the Fred Meyers on 132nd Street and on Evergreen Way, and the QFCs on Broadway and Everegreen Way.
Bus driver Thyra Lepak volunteered Friday, Saturday and Sunday. She stood in front of the QFC on Broadway on Sunday afternoon. She’d seen one person donate three carts full of school supplies and others hand over cash or pricey items like graphing calculators.
“It’s going for a great cause,” she said. “Education can be expensive nowadays. I don’t feel it should be, but it is. Any help is greatly appreciated.”
It doesn’t take much, Sandygren said. As the district grows, she expects the need to get bigger. Classroom budgets are tight, and many families don’t have the money to keep up with long lists of school supplies.
Students should have all the tools they need to learn, she said. None of them should feel frustrated or ashamed because they don’t have the supplies their teachers and classmates expect them to.
“If people can just keep this in their heads and hearts: there’s always someone out there whose need is greater than your own,” Sandygren said. “A box of pencils goes a long way.”
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
