Jason Boehm-2/3/10-Getting Tools for City Schools
This afternoon Ben, Ivo, Miral, Bryce and I met Dennis Kitchen, the director of Getting Tools for City Schools. It was our first visit with Dennis. We met him at the library around 4 o’clock. He wanted to give us a brief overview of the organization and explained what there mission was. We learned some interesting facts. He gets a list of schools that are economically depressed in the city. The requirement is over 90% of the kids have to be in the “Title 1” program. This program was put in place to help schools with high numbers or high percentages of poor children to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards. Tools for City Schools tries to get a 3-ring Binders, paper, pencils and pens, pocket dividers and a pencil cases to students who are in this program. He then showed us some eye-opening photos of schools that need help and we heard a 7th grade math teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant talking about the school she teaches in and how Tools for City Schools helps kids stay off the streets and in school. We then talked about how we can help get “tools” and fundraise. Many people had creative ideas. Ben stated that he lived in a NYU dormitory and could place a box in his lobby to collect unused supplies from the collage students. Ivo came up with the idea of making a goal chart to get about 270 full binders by the end of this year. After this overview we showed Dennis the box of school supplies we collected at the Middle School Dance. It was filled to the top. We decided to get a inventory check to see how much we had actually collected. For now we are storing the supplies in Sarah’s Room. The hardest part of the day was trying to bring the box upstairs, it took us about 10 minutes. Once we started to unpack we had noticed that there were a lot more supplies than we thought there were. We collected enough pencils to fill the 270 binders but we are short in every other category. Our homework from now until next time we meet Dennis is to make a goal chart and advertise somehow that we need supplies. It would be great if every kid brought in 2 three ring binders.