Christmas coming to Cooper Elementary
Although there are no Christmas concerts this year, Cooper Elementary is still celebrating Christmas with some help from the community.
Counselor Buddy Herndon said the staff has had to adjust to missing volunteers around the school.
“I trained over 70 volunteers last year,” he said. “Some were here every day, some weekly.”
He also managed a mentor program that had many volunteers eating lunch with their designated mentees each week. Although the volunteers are missed, the staff has been making it work.
At Christmas each year, school counselors in the district direct families to the help they need.
One very popular program, Shop With A Cop, has found a way to work around the pandemic restrictions, Herndon said. Usually, students are paired with police officers and actually go shopping, often to the Jane Walmart, but this year students can’t leave the school. Instead, they are making up wish lists that are given to the officers who do the shopping for them. Back at school, Herndon organizes individual wrapping parties so the kids can get the gifts ready for their families. They also get a pizza lunch.
One thing that is special about Shop with A Cop is that students shop for their entire families.
“The fun part is watching these young kids buying things for their younger brothers and sisters,” he said.
It’s important for the officers to connect with the children so, after the gifts are wrapped, they go back to the police officers who deliver them in person to the student’s homes.
Cooper gets a lot of help from the community, especially at Christmas time, Herndon said. Staff members and some community members enjoy “adopting”
a family for Christmas. He can hook up the families who need help to the people who want to help.
This year, the school received a load of brand new coats collected during the POA coat drive. Herndon helped distribute them to families, although they didn’t wait until Christmas.
But every year there are families who find themselves in need at the last minute. There are resources that can help, he said.
The district’s initiative, Bright Futures, has a goal to fill each need within 24 hours. That might mean finding housing for a teenager who has been kicked out of a home or a way for a family to wash the clothes it needs for school, director Amanda Musick said. She works with the district’s social workers and counselors to provide the solutions.
Because of families that lost income due to covid-19, it’s been a busy year, she said. Recently, as the extra federal funds for unemployment ran out, more families than usual are looking for help. Musick helps match the community programs to the families in need.
Some of the Christmas gift-giving programs ask their recipients to sign up early, Musick said. When there’s an emergency closer to Christmas, district social workers may try to work with the agency to get a family added. There are also churches that have toys and food for needy families and social workers and school counselors have access to vouchers for those programs.
At Cooper, Herndon has an email list for emergencies. When he finds a student in need, he sends an email to the list and someone is always willing to help. In the past, when a family arrived in the area with no furniture, a couple of emails went out and volunteers furnished an entire apartment within hours, he said.
Even while everything is different this year, there are still people working to make sure that Christmas continues to be merry for the families at Cooper Elementary.