LIZEMORES - Students all over Clay County returned to class Thursday morning, and more than 1,000 elementary students walked into schools to see a surprise. A non-profit from Dayton, Ohio, donated backpacks full of basic school supplies to all of the students and totes filled with classroom gear for teachers.
Although the county normally provides students with similar basic supplies, officials from the school board said the donation helped save the school system money after some of its schools were damaged by the late-June floods.
"We are still lucky compared to a lot of other school districts that were hit even harder. We're happy to say we started school as scheduled at all of our schools," said assistant superintendent Joe Paxton. "Anything is a major help, and every little bit adds up."
The non-profit organization, the Kids in Need Foundation, donated backpacks to all of the elementary students filled with folders, notebook paper, pencils and other essential school supplies. The donation came from the foundation's Second Responder program, which sends school supplies to areas where a natural disaster has occurred.
Dave Smith, the foundation's executive director, said his organization decided to donate to schools in Clay County after assessing multiple counties in West Virginia that were affected by the floods. In addition to sending school supplies to areas hit by natural disasters, the Kids in Need Foundation also donates school supplies to low-income areas every day, making Clay County a good fit.
"This was just a way to try and get the community back to normal. Lots of issues went on with the flooding. We call our program the Second Responder program because we're not here with the water, food and blankets initially, but we've always been told that when a community is struck by a natural disaster, the community gets some sort of normalcy when the kids go back to school."
Lizemores Elementary wasn't directly affected by the flood, but teachers here are still learning to cope with increased class sizes after Dixie Elementary shut down at the end of the last school year. Some of the students that normally would go to Dixie Elementary now go to Lizemores, in addition to several out-of-county students from Fayette and Nicholas counties.
Lizemores Elementary students lined up in the cafeteria Thursday morning, bouncing in the seats. Teachers said the first day of school is normally exciting, but today the kids were even more rambunctious. As they sat down and started pulling open their backpacks, they started swapping folders with each other and traded erasers to get their favorite color.
"We were just tickled when they contacted us to tell us that they were coming," said Tina Burnette, the principal of Lizemores Elementary. "The flood wasn't as bad on our end of the county as it was on other parts. There weren't very many of our students impacted, just a few."
Lynn Brogan, a first grade teacher at Lizemores Elementary, said she and the other teachers were surprised that national charity cared so much about schools in her small county. In the morning before the assembly, during her class' "share time," none of Brogan's students talked about the flood.
She isn't sure if that's because they weren't affected, or because the situation was so traumatic they didn't feel comfortable talking about it yet with a new teacher. She figured it was probably the latter, and hopes they will feel comfortable opening up to her as the school year continues on.
Even if many of the school's students were not affected by the flood, Burnette said several walked into class that morning without any backpacks or any kind of school supplies.
"If you can provide for your child, you don't realize what a burden that can be if you can't," Burnette said. "Our students - we call them our kids, because they're not just our students - we provide meals on the weekends sometimes for kids we know aren't going to have food for the weekend.
"We treat them like we would want our kids treated."
Reach Jake Jarvis at jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, Facebook.com/newsroomjake, 304-348-7939 or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.