Tuesday, volunteers in masks worked for hours to pack more than 4,500 PPE kits for Frisco ISD teachers.
Frisco-based Altair Global’s CEO Chad Sterling said the effort began a month ago with one employee’s goal of donating kits for two schools. Since then, more than 20 businesses and individuals donated to produce kits for all 72 schools in the district.
The kits include gloves, masks and hand sanitizer along with school supplies and snacks.
“The reality is a lot of teachers already have masks and PPE, but we also know when kids come back in school, there’s going to be needs in the classroom,” said Sterling.
“You may have a child that forgets their mask one day, so we wanted that to be a back-up and more than anything be a security blanket to help ease some of the anxiety for the teachers,” Sterling added.
Throughout the state, the Texas Education Agency aimed to deliver PPE including masks, thermometers and face shields to districts. Some of the full allotments haven’t come through yet.
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FISD said it hasn’t yet received its allotment of child-sized disposable masks or gloves from the TEA, though the district said it did purchase 40,000 child-sized masks and 259,000 disposable gloves on its own to ensure there is enough on-hand for the start of on-campus teaching.
Gloves and hand sanitizer are in short supply as well as staff prepares for in-person instruction with extra sanitation guidelines in place.
FISD Director of Community Relations Allison Miller said the donations offer an extra boost for educators.
“It elevates the atmosphere here in the classroom and around the district,” said Miller. “Our staff sees that our community is rallying for them and appreciates them and is looking to help them.”
The PPE kits assembled this week are set to be delivered on Friday. Altair Global said CoServ, which picked up much of the supplies, will handle most of the deliveries.
“We have large vehicles that we can pick up the stuff. That helped Altair and the rest of the group really focus the funds that were being distributed on the stuff for the teachers,” said Mario Zavala, CoServ Coordinator of Community Engagement.
Zavala said the goal is to let teachers know the business community is behind them.
Sterling agrees.
“We have a role to play and what’s ultimately good for the community and for our employees comes back and is good for the business as well,” Sterling said.
*Map locations are approximate, central locations for the city and are not meant to indicate where actual infected people live.
