In the wake of hurricane season, Columbia Public Schools have donated hundreds of boxes of school supplies to schools in Houston.
Dr. Tim Majerus is the Principal at Beulah Ralph Elementary School in Columbia. He described the elementary school as a “service-learning” school, meaning each grade focuses on different service projects and volunteering opportunities each year.
Majerus said after watching the news and hearing about the flooding in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, he thought his school could help.
"One day, I just randomly started calling schools in Houston,” he said. “I wanted to find one school to partner with in Houston, but unfortunately, at that point the schools were still closed. I got no answer. I called lots and lots of schools."
Majerus said after his calls didn’t work he began emailing individual principals. That’s when he first connected with Matthew Salley, the principal at Kohfeldt Elementary School in Texas.
However, it wasn’t just Salley who responded to Majerus’s emails. Quickly, a list of 13 schools in need, including Kohfeldt, was gathered and Majerus realized that his school couldn’t provide everything needed.
“So the next morning we had a principals meeting in Columbia and I asked the principles in Columbia - all the elementary school principals - if they would be interested in having their schools partner with schools in the Houston area and super quickly 15 of them said, ‘Yes, we want to do that.’”
Soon word began to spread about the Columbia School’s effort, and schools in Hannibal and St. Louis offered to collect supplies.
Majerus said he wanted to make sure the materials being collected were truly needed so he coordinated with the schools in Texas to make sure students were bringing in the right donations.
“The first thing I did after talking with the principal was ask him for a list of suggested ideas. So he sent me a list of things that they needed and it was primarily school supplies,” Majerus said.
After a few weeks Majerus, his school and many others, had filled 557 boxes with assorted school supplies.
Majerus and his son Luke, a senior in high school, packed up the boxes with help from the fifth graders at Beulah Ralph on a Wednesday, drove down to Houston the next day and were delivering donations that Friday.
He said they were greeted by students, faculty and local residents.
“Everyone that we met was so kind and very appreciative of everything that the folks in Columbia had done for them, they talked about how helpful the supplies that we had gathered would be for their children,” Majerus said.
Of the thirteen schools Majerus and his son brought donations to, he said only one of the schools had physical damage from the storm - Bay Colony in Texas City Independent School District.
“The school itself had quite a bit of water in it and so they were in the process- they were still having school- but they were in the process of replacing floors, replacing dry wall so they definitely were impacted,” Majerus said.
The final school Majerus dropped donations off at the school that started it all - Kohfeldt Elementary.
“That was neat to meet Matthew Salley and his team,” he said. “They were all so kind. They had a sign in the yard welcoming us.”
Majerus said he and Salley plan to continue a partnership between their two schools for the remainder of the school year.
Since returning from Texas, Majerus said he is still receiving an outpouring from people looking to help. He added that since the project began he has met many people willing to help the cause.
“It just made me feel good to realize that people definitely wanted to help and as soon as they found out how they could help, everyone pitched in and joined the effort,” Majerus said.
