Six hundred ten students; six hundred ten grins.
Every student at Springdale’s Jones Elementary left the school cafeteria Friday morning with a bag of food, a bag of toys and a grin on his or her face - not a smile, a grin.
“It’s possible because we have a very giving community,” said Principal Melissa Fink.
“The Angel Tree That Wasn’t” program provided gifts to Jones students for the fifth year. The giving was made possible this year by more than $20,000 in donations from the community.
Arvest Bank, one of the school’s Partners in Education, Springdale High School oral communication students, a department at Tyson Foods and more held food drives to benefit the program, Fink said.
Jones teachers paid a few dollars for the privilege of wearing jeans to school, held small fund drives and gave personal donations. Former students, church groups … the list of benefactors was long.
“I hardly went a day without somebody handing me a check,” said Jones counselor Suzanne Cartwright. “People would justwrite me a check. I had a man from Tyson Foods just walk in and hand me a $100 bill.”
More than 98 percent of Jones students live below the poverty level, Fink said.
Cartwright told the story of one student she spoke with shortly after the heavy snowfall in early December. She asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him this year. “He said ‘gloves.’ He said it hurt his hands to play in the snow,” Cartwright said. “He also asked for shoes. No toy.”
“I worried the kids weren’t eating during the snow days,” said Christy Norwood, the school’s assistant principal, as she was sorting food items. “Now I don’t have to worry during Christmas.”
Each child received some staple canned-food items and “snack pack” food, Fink said. Snack packs are food sent home each Friday so kids will have something to eat over the weekend. Items might include crackers and fruit cups.
“The foods are easily accessible for a child,” she said. “They might be home alone (because the parents are at work) and can’t cook.
“Part of school is building relationships,” Fink continued. “We are creating this as a place where they can feel safe, and all theirneeds are met.”
Cartwright gives credit for the program to Jan Brown, a counselor retired from Springdale’s Bayyari Elementary School, who shared the idea at a counselors’ meeting.
Cartwright took the idea to Fink, who said, “What do we need to do?”
“We had so many families ask us for help at Christmas, but only a few businesses who wanted to sponsor,” Cartwright said. “It was hard to match them up with just a few families. It didn’t seem fair.
“Christmas was just awful for me,” said Cartwright, who is a mother of four. “I couldn’t enjoy Christmas. I felt so bad for the families we weren’t helping.”
“We would put up an Angel Tree, but who was going to take one,” Fink said, referring to the program’s name.
And Cartwright would remind parents of the October deadlines to sign up for assistance but, for one reason or another, many families didn’t make the list.
Ana Villafranca, the mother of two Jones children, shared the plight of many families. The winter snowstorm shut down construction sites where her husband works, so they had no income.
Villafranca said she works earning $7.50 an hour, but she uses that to pay for a babysitter, food, rent and other bills.
“We have no money for Christmas,” she said. The Villafrancas were able to buy their children books and clothes, but no toys, she said. And she thinks the toys givenFriday will help keep the kids entertained during the Christmas break.
Kenneth Schell said he also appreciates the program. “I got my little girl (a kindergartner) in the custody battle in October, and I didn’t have anything for her. It’s helpful,” he said in a telephone interview from the school Friday.
“It’s a nice gesture of thepeople who do (make donations),” Rosa Rivera, the mother of a second-grader, said through an interpreter. “Some of them don’t have the money to put food on the table. And the children get to see different people, who treat them well.” CAN’T WAIT
Third-grade boys knewwhat was coming, but they still entered the cafeteria Friday with quiet calls of excitement: “Oooh!” “Awesome!”
On the other hand, kindergartners, new to the school, held their bags like they were something precious. “Hold it tight, just like you do your library books,” urged kindergarten teacher Sharon Riggenbach.
Fink said the teachers asked the children not to open their bags until they got home, so items wouldn’t get lost in confusion. But that didn’t stop the kids from trying to guess what was in them, while others tried to peek.
Fifth-grader Jonathan Pulido thought his toy might be Play-Doh. “I saw it,” he admitted, then listed the videogames he hoped to get for Christmas.
Classmate Chesney Sierra thought hers might contain a stocking or “sock.” She hoped it contained some hot chocolate or something warm to drink, part of her family’s Christmas celebration. “It’s nice,” she said. “Maybe some other schools don’t get this.”
Life, Pages 7 on 12/25/2013