The Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club has agreed to assist the Circles of Mercy organization in gathering school supplies for children in the Rensselaer City School District. Given the financial picture of many of that community’s residents, anything we can do to help will have a major impact.
We’re asking everyone to pitch in by purchasing some supplies from the following list, and dropping them off at Ron Annis’s Top Form office. The deadline for the drive will be Friday, August 14. I’ll then pick up the donations and deliver them to Circles of Mercy to meet its deadline.
The focus is on items for high school and pre-school students. Circles of Mercy is requesting the following types of supplies for its “Cate’s Kids Back to School Program”:
• pencils (regular lead #2 and color)
• pencil sharpeners
• erasers (for pencils)
• pens (black or blue)
• markers (dry erase and color)
• pocket folders (assorted colors)
• 3 ring binders (in 2” and 3” sizes)
• loose leaf paper (college ruled)
• graph paper
• spiral subject notebooks (1-, 3- and 5-subject in college ruled)
• subject dividers
• plastic zipper pencil cases / boxes
• 3”x5” index cards
• highlighters (yellow)
• rulers (regular with metric)
• Kleenex tissues
• hand sanitizer (small bottles)
• Post-It notes
• backpacks (no rollers/wheels)
• Spanish-English dictionaries
• flash drives (1gb to 4gb sizes)
• scientific calculators.
In Rensselaer, of approximately 1,100 students who attended school this year, 71% qualify for either free or reduced-price lunch programs. And, 33% live near or below the federal poverty level.
Your contributions to this drive will be another step in our club’s aid to Rensselaer children, since we awarded a grant during the recent school year to underwrite an experimental after-school tutoring program.
