Hermitage church donates supplies to Metro schools

WKRN Channel 2 News Posted: Jul 27, 2009 7:36 AM CDT NASHVILLE, Tenn. - With the school year just around the corner, one local church is putting together school supplies to make sure students have everything they need to learn. Volunteers at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church filled nearly 400 boxes with notebooks, markers and other school supplies. In the tough economy, Chad Smith, the pre-school minister for the church, said the church wants to help out the families. "Families are struggling and we just want to be able to take that pressure," Smith said. Smith's wife is a teacher and he said often times, the teachers end up supplying classroom resources out of their own pockets. For the past month, Smith and an army of volunteers at the church have been collecting supplies, boxing them up and now, driving them to six area elementary and middle schools. Each teacher's classroom will start the year with a box full of school supplies. "Most elementary schools in Metro, each child is given a white dry erase board," Smith said. "They need their own dry erase markers so we've collected those." Volunteers loaded up trucks and minivans to make the deliveries, where they go into every school room and leave the box with a note. They say what they're doing is really about the students. "So they don't feel awkward, they don't feel embarrassed because they didn't have [a supply]," Smith said. The church estimated the amount of supplies they've collected will help around 1,000 students. They hope other church and community groups will do the same, helping even more students. "If every church in every community did this, there would not be any child left behind," Smith said. "Ever child that needs these things would have it." The six schools who received supplies are Tulips Grove Elementary in Hermitage, DuPont Tyler Middle and Elementary schools, DuPont Hadley Middle in the Old Hickory area and Mt. Juliet Elementary and Middle schools.