If you’re a teacher in Monongalia County Schools and you need supplies for your classroom, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. wants you to go to the source.
“Let your principal know,” he said Thursday. “It’s that easy.”
Last week, it was more perplexing than easy for Emily Calandrelli, the aerospace engineer-turned-Emmy-winning TV host for a kids’ science show.
Calandrelli grew up in Morgantown and was educated in the public schools here.
The perplexing part of the equation came after she put out a Facebook call for Mon teachers to send her their wish lists for classrooms this fall.
Lists that usually include markers, tissues, hand sanitizer and the like.
“The idea was to try to help the hard-working teachers back home,” said Calandrelli, who knows they often dip in their pockets to buy things for their rooms.
Calandrelli, who annually reaches out to educators across the country for the same, wanted to use her celebrity to get Good Samaritans across the country and world to bring it to West Virginia, as it were.
According to her public Facebook page, she has 620,000 followers online.
There was one thing, however — one big thing, that put the overture at odds with Mon Schools.
Said lists were to be posted on the Amazon Wish List platform, as opposed to going through a group of parents or an athletic booster club simply getting together to buy supplies or host a fundraiser.
Amazon is a third-party vendor, the superintendent said, and any supplies ordered would be coming in from the outside.
Teachers, by the act of entering the information themselves, would be engaging in crowdfunding, as per district policy 6605, which the Board of Education enacted four years ago.
Of costs and causes
Here is 6605, in entirety:
“ … This policy applies to the use of any form of crowdfunding utilizing an online service or website-based platform for the financial benefit or gain of the District – be it a specific classroom, grade level, department, school, or curricular or extracurricular activity.
” ‘Crowdfunding’ is defined as the solicitation of resources from individuals and/or organizations to support identified activities or projects that enhance the educational program or a specific cause approved by the District. The solicitation is typically from a large number of individuals/organizations utilizing internet-based technologies.
The Board of Education does not permit or sanction the use of crowdfunding for District or specific school programs or activities, including co-curricular or extracurricular activities.”
Besides, the superintendent said, the community is already known for its overwhelming support of an excess levy for education that brings $30 million annually to school coffers here.
“We don’t want to nickel-and-dime our parents and grandparents when they already do so much,” he said.
Recently, the Monongalia County 4-H Club has taken to collecting supplies, which is perfectly fine, Campbell said, even if the organization is also going through Amazon.
That’s because teachers are handing off their lists, opposed to directly making the online request.
What works for Policy 6605 and the local 4-H also works for any PTA group or athletic booster club raising money for a road trip to a tournament in another state, he said.
“It just comes down to how teachers ask for the supplies,” he said.
“Ms. Calandrelli could adopt a whole class or a whole school and [directly] order supplies and it would be fine,” he continued.
“It’s the same for the local groups,” Campbell said.
“I sign requests every day. We’ve never discouraged teachers from working together to get the things they need.”
While a school fundraiser is fine, he said, setting up a GoFundMe account for a trip to an academic competition, for example, would be denied under the policy due to third-party costs involved.
In the meantime, Calandrelli expanded the Amazon wish-list call to teachers in districts across the Mountain State that aren’t bound by such policy.
Requests currently range from a Hasbro “Mouse Trap” board game ($24.99) to Ziploc-brand gallon-sized storage bags ($9.72, in a large-count box).
One teacher asked for a “coding and drawing” robot ($51.07) from the Education Insights company — and another put out a call for a 48-pack of double-A alkaline batteries in the Amazon Basics brand for $14.72.
Appreciation (the card-carrying kind)
Mon teachers, meanwhile, receive $300 a year in general fund and faculty senate dollars to spend as they wish for help with the lesson plan, so long as the purchase is of “instructional value” to the classroom, Deputy Superintendent Donna Talerico said.
The district this year is also launching the “Boost Our Educators” program — BOE, for short — whereby teachers get discounts of coffee and other such purchases through local business by presenting a district-issued card with a QR code, she said.
Teaching is hard work, she said, and the people in front of the classroom often feel underappreciated.
“But this is something we can do, with the support of our business community, to let them know that they are very much appreciated.”
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