Northwestern Local Schools Superintendent Jesse Steiner was at a local Rotary meeting when he overheard a conversation.
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“I was not a part of the conversation but I hear this, ‘Hey, Tecumseh is going to start collecting water and it’ll be nice if another school would also collect,’ and I knew that was my cue,” Steiner said.
He then challenged Tecumseh Assistant Superintendent Paula Crew to see which district could collect more donations.
Water donations started coming in from all over, he said.
“The German Twp. trustees, the German Twp. fire and police departments brought three skids of water they got from Rural King,” Steiner said.
The two, local school districts have been collecting water for the past two weeks, each trying to outdo the other.
Crew said her school district received the same response from groups and individuals.
“Special shout out to Kevin Hall, the head custodian at Donnelsville Elementary, who by himself collected over 500 cases of water,” Crew said.
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Steiner then had another idea, thanks to his sister-in-law. She lives in League City, Texas, one of the locations that received some of the heaviest rainfall. She also works at a school, Clear Springs High School.
The school year had just begun a few days before the hurricane hit.
“Most of these students, they were there in school for four days and lost everything,” Steiner said.
His idea was for another challenge — collecting school supplies.
“Schools are much bigger in Texas. They have countywide school districts and so if we were going to help entire school district, we need to expand what we are doing and invite all the schools in the county to help with us collecting water and school supplies,” Steiner said.
Other Clark County schools including Global Impact STEM Academy, Clark-Shawnee, Northeastern and Springfield-Clark CTC are now participating in the challenge.
He then enlisted the help on Clark County Emergency Management Agency to help with the logistics of the countywide response for the League City School District.
The new challenge will focus on new items like trash bags, blankets, backpacks, notebooks, pens, pencils, crayons, scissors, socks and shoes. It will begin Friday and run until the end of the month.
People can also donate money at a secure bank account at Security National Bank that will be spent locally on school supplies and transportation to get the items to Texas.
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