GR Benefits collects for Texas school hit by Harvey

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Glen Ridge Benefits, the fundraising arm of the home and school associations throughout the school district, is currently raising donations for a Houston, Texas, school damaged by Hurricane Harvey.
The effort to help was initiated with the president of the Glen Ridge High School Home and School Association, Julie Stolte.

“I use to live in Houston, from 2008 to 2010,” she said earlier this week. “My oldest child went to kindergarten and first grade there, at Herod Elementary. I reached out to his kindergarten teacher to see what was going on. She told me his school didn’t have damage.”
But Stolte learned that Kolter Elementary, another Houston school, was badly damaged by 4 feet of water.

“I reached out to the president of their Parent and Teachers Organization,” she said. “She said they need gift cards because there was no place to put anything else. She suggested Costco, Home Depot and Target store cards.”
Stolte found out that the hurricane hit just as schools were about to open for the new year.

“Most other schools started Sept. 11,” she said. “Kolter started Sept. 25 in a different building.”
From her own experience, she knew flooding was commonplace in the area where the school was situated. The area of Houston in which she lived, Maplewood, did not flood during the time she was there.

Stolte thought gift cards to various stores would be a good idea and that it would be a community effort for Glen Ridge for a specific group of people in Houston. So she contacted Kathleen Weissenberger, the chairwoman of GR Benefits.

“I reached out to Kathy and she said absolutely,” Stolte said. “It was terrific the way GR Benefits took the idea and ran with it.”
She said that a percentage of the donations would be directed back to the Glen Ridge home and school associations.
Stolte was touched by what she saw had happened to Houston.

“It was really sad,” she said. “We loved our time there. The people of Houston are great. It was hard to watch.”
Half of her Houston friends were flooded out of their homes, she said. The son of one friend did not even have shoes after Harvey hit and he got around wearing too-small flip-flops. Stolte said her friend was so happy when the boy received a pair of shoes that fit.
“Things like that are heartbreaking,” she said. But Stolte said even her son’s former school was affected by Harvey. Flood waters busted school pipes and Herod Elementary was flooded, too.

“They couldn’t catch a break,” she said.
Weissenberger said the drive, “Shop for Harvey,” will end Oct. 20. So far, between $750 and $1,000 has been collected.
The gift cards are purchased through the SCRIP Program, she said. This allows for some of the proceeds to come back to the donor. Weissenberger said Stolte would be making the arrangements for getting the cards to Kolter Elementary.

According to Weissenberger, this is the first time GR Benefits has made a collection for a school outside the district. GR Benefits will usually raise about $20,000 annually for borough schools. Weissenberger said that ordinarily the same people can be expected to donate to GR Benefits. But with “Shop for Harvey,” new donors have become involved.

The principal of Kolter Elementary, Julie Dickinson, in a telephone interview earlier this week, said the front of the school, where the cafeteria is located, had been under 4 feet of water. The classrooms, toward the back of the school, were under 2 to 3 feet.
“The contents were a total loss,” she said. “The building is now just walls and windows. They essentially gutted the building.”

She said her school had 640 students. Except for 13 of them, they have all relocated to a vacant school five miles away. The 13 missing students are accounted for, either in other schools or they have moved away. “We’ve gotten library books but we don’t have a library,” she said of some donations. “We’re 200 children bigger than the school. I don’t have storage room.”
What she needs, she said, is organizational and learning materials.

“Flash cards, binder rings, things that can help a teacher organize material.”
Dickinson said she is hoping to get back to Kolter by September.

“The school district here has offered a shuttle transportation from the old school,” she said. “We’ve been meeting with contractors who are not from Houston. They couldn’t believe what they saw.”
Anyone wish to donate to “Shop for Harvey” may do so by contacting a Glen Ridge school.