School store gives clothes to students
Staff aims to reduce obstacles to learning with donated goods.
Kristen Crane LONDON — first noticed the too-big outfit on the little girl in one of her classes on a Monday, not long after the start of this school year. It caught her eye again on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday. And Thursday.
By then, those same clothes were wrinkled and dirty and just didn’t smell so nice. Crane, who teaches kindergarten at London Elementary School, realized she needed to do something.
A few days later, she asked the child if she wanted to go shopping while all her classmates went to gym class. The 6-year-old said “yes.”
Together, the two walked to a room that used to be a teacher’s lounge at the end of a second-floor hallway. Melissa Canney met them there surrounded by racks of clothes, laundry baskets full of backpacks, bins stuffed with hats and gloves and shelves stocked with shoes.
Canney, the student-support services specialist for the 1,900-student London district in Madison County, greeted the girl: “I’m Miss Melissa and I own this store. You know what? The best thing about it is that everything here is free.”
And with that, the kindergartner became one of the 20-some students who so far this school year have been the inaugural “customers” of The Raider Rack, a new “store” for pre-kindergartners to seniors.
All of the clothes — from the fancy, black velvet dress to raincoats and camouflage American Eagle T-shirts to men’s Reebok basketball shoes and zip-up hoodies — are new.
District leaders, committee volunteers and Canney saw a need — one that had nothing to do with grades but everything to do with education — and asked the community to help meet it. People responded. More than $6,000 in cash and donations has come in to stock the shelves of the store that opened at the start of the school year in August, complete with a dressing room and shopping bags.
The “grand opening” took place Tuesday, just as if the store were a Macy’s on Fifth Avenue rather than in an elementary school on Elm Street. Local dignitaries cut the ceremonial ribbon and the Chamber of Commerce heralded its presence.
When the district’s teachers see a need, they will as gently and as indiscriminately as possible refer students to the store. The teachers hope the students will avoid teasing, be more physically and emotionally comfortable and focus not on what they are wearing or how their clothes smell or look but on what matters: learning.
Each item in the store carries a handmade tag attached by safety pin that reads, in part: “Enjoy this new piece of clothing. It was picked with you in mind.”
Crane said the young student she took to the school went home with two pairs of jeans, two shirts, a fall jacket and two pair of shoes.
“I called my mom right after and I was crying,” she said. “My heart was so happy and full.”
Canney said the free store is about removing outsideof-school barriers that prevent kids from succeeding academically.