Not long after Hurricane Harvey began ravaging the Texas coast, students nearly 2,000 miles away in northernmost Maine began thinking about how they could help victims of the record-breaking rainfall.
Such thoughts are nothing new for members of Caribou High School’s National Honor Society chapter.
“A few years ago when Louisiana was hit by a hurricane our NHS held a fundraiser and sent some money down there through the Red Cross,” recalled CHS principal Travis Barnes. “Then shortly after Texas was hit by the hurricane this time, I was approached again by them asking what they could do.”
Similar urges to support victims of Harvey’s aftermath likely will be played out in schools across the state during the coming days, with the Maine Principals’ Association set to serve as a link to direct the fruits of such fundraising efforts toward where they can help the most through its educational connections in the Lone Star State.
The MPA offered to coordinate the delivery of school fundraising efforts to aid victims of the Texas floods through an email Wednesday to its membership and as well as athletic administrators around the state. While most schools are just starting classes for the 2017-2018 year, MPA executive director Dick Durost already reported receiving several interested responses as of late Thursday morning.
The MPA has served in a similar capacity on at least three other occasions, beginning in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
“Back then it really started with schools contacting me asking how to reach schools in New Orleans and how could they help in whatever way that was needed,” recalled Durost.
In that instance, Durost contacted the Louisiana principals’ association to facilitate the distribution of funds that were raised by Maine schools and students. Similar efforts have taken place since then after subsequent hurricanes that damaged parts of Louisiana and Florida.
Those experiences fueled the current interest by Maine schools and students to those affected by Hurricane Harvey.
“I started getting texts and emails earlier this week from principals who remembered asking if we’d be willing to coordinate something again,” said Durost. “I said, ‘Sure.’
“I think it’s a great thing for us as an association to do.”
Durost is coordinating the MPA’s effort in part through two of his educational compatriots from Texas, one an assistant executive director of that state’s elementary principals’ association and the second a former colleague who now is a high school mathematics curriculum coordinator with the Houston Independent School District.
“One of the things I’m always concerned about is that I don’t want people to go out and raise money and have people donate money in a good-faith way and then not be able to give assurances that it’s going to be used correctly on the other end,” Durost said. “Having those two connections makes me feel pretty good that whatever schools are able to raise and funnel through us, we can be pretty sure the money is going to be used for the purposes intended.
“The other thing we found in the past was that to send supplies or other things there becomes difficult and expensive because of the shipping, so for things like school supplies what we end up doing is sending checks or if schools want to buy gift cards for places like Staples, that seems to work the best as opposed to physically packing up supplies and sending them out.”
Durost admitted this isn’t the ideal time for Maine schools or service-oriented clubs within those schools to start fundraising projects because most are either just beginning their new academic year or will commence classes after Labor Day.
“With people just opening up school they’ve already got about 4,000 things on their plate,” he said.
But in terms of identifying more specific schools to support along Harvey’s path of destruction, Durost suggested Maine students do have some time to organize support efforts if they wish because schools affected by the Texas hurricane won’t resume classes until after the high water recedes and needs are assessed.
“The people I’ve talked to said it would be days or even weeks before they’ll know who specifically needs what, so I think we can be a little open-ended here in terms of how long we can hold this open,” he added.
Caribou High School already is into its third week of classes of the new year — the early start still a tradition in many Aroostook County districts to accommodate next month’s harvest break — and students there had a special reason to consider helping their peers in Texas.
Each year a small number of students from Texas spend part of the school year at Caribou High while their families help with the harvest as migrant workers.
Barnes said two Texas teens are taking classes at Caribou, though that number has previously been as high as seven or eight. Those students remain in Caribou through the end of the harvest in late October before returning home with their families and resuming classes at their Texas schools.
“We were thinking about whether there was a way to support them as they went back to their schools because we’d be willing to do it, but fortunately the area these students are from wasn’t ravaged by the hurricane,” Barnes said.
But the school’s NHS chapter still plans to help.
“What we really are hoping for is a specific high school that we can send the money to and say, ‘Here, use it as you need it to support your kids,’” said Barnes.
