Nearly 100 district teachers took advantage of the Teacher’s Aid Coalition’s bi-annual classroom supplies shopping spree March 15 at P.A. Walsh STEAM Academy.
Pencils, pens, markers, binder paper, copy paper, graphing paper and other essentials were set out by a dozen TAC members, along with some help from select Gavilan College students, before teachers began arriving to fill their bags.
“Most of them know what to bring. They have their shopping bags ready,” said longstanding TAC member Ron Woolf, also a trustee on Morgan Hill Unified’s board of education. “It’s like going into a grocery store or like going into Staples.”
Woolf explained that elementary, middle school and high school teachers are surveyed so that TAC’s designated shopper knows what supplies are most needed for their classrooms. This year, TAC’s Chocolate and Wine for Valentine fundraiser in February generated more than $8,000 that was then spent on teacher supplies for the March 15 giveaway. The Rotary Club of Morgan Hill is a major sponsor for the event.
“We find out what they are looking for, what’s hard to find and what can we provide that they don’t have to provide out of their own pocket,” said Woolf, a retired educator himself who noted that on average a teacher spends about $130 of their own money on classroom supplies for a single school year.
TAC, a nonprofit group founded in 1999 by Dr. Jon Hatakeyama and Bob Davis, is run by volunteers with educational and professional backgrounds. TAC is not affiliated with MHUSD.
“Our focus is to meet the needs of children in Morgan Hill schools by filling the supply gap left by diminishing classroom budgets,” according to TAC’s website. “Supplies donated to TAC go directly into teachers’ classrooms.”
TAC volunteers have organized their teacher shopping sprees twice a year since 1999: once in late September-early October and the other in mid-March.
