News

Agencies partner with schools for Christmas

By Molly McGowan Gorsuch, Published: December 17, 2014

Thanks to the assistance of two local nonprofits and the generosity of the community, needy students in Henderson County Public Schools have received both the Christmas gifts they'd wished for and the counseling they may need during what can often be a trying season for families.

Matt Gruebmeyer, director of Title I and homeless education for Henderson County Public Schools, said for years counselors in individual schools would adopt the role of Santa Claus and match needy children's wish lists to community donors, in an effort to ensure all students had Christmas presents under their trees.

"I'd done it for 10 years," said Gloria Anderson, counselor at Upward Elementary. "It's an enormous amount of work."

She explained counselors would gather information from parents about toy specifics and clothes sizes, oftentimes translate wish lists, and code the information since the schools couldn't give the actual names of children to their sponsors.

"It takes several months to do that," and the work detracted from the time counselors could spend on guidance counseling, Anderson said. "We just felt that our time could be (better) spent counseling children and working with families," especially since many students who come from split families or are experiencing other hardships at home find it difficult to cope during the holidays.

The Salvation Army of Henderson County and The Storehouse offered to take the Christmas elf duties off the shoulders of school counselors, and streamlined the process of matching children with donors by having parents sign their children up for Christmas assistance at local schools during special "intake" sessions.

"That way families didn't have to com to our offices," said Carrie Israel, social services director at The Salvation Army. "We took turns going to different schools."

"We just integrated more children into our program," said Lynn Staggs, executive director of The Storehouse. "I think it helped the counselors because it eliminated duplication."

She said The Storehouse and The Salvation Army used Charity Tracker, a cloud based data system used by local charities, to keep track of which families had been served by what agency. Since The Salvation Army normally offers Christmas assistance to children up to age 12, the agency handled the wish lists from kindergarten through middle school and The Storehouse served the older schoolchildren.

That equates to an additional 500 children served by The Storehouse this year, said Staggs. She said the nonprofit started with 738 children last year; as of Tuesday, it had served 1,221.

"We've had an increase of over 40 percent," Israel said. She said The Salvation Army had 716 "angels" on their Angel Trees last year, and this year 1,199 children were served.