Sheriff’s volunteers donate supplies to two rookie teachers

By Sarah Brown

In their fifth year of organizing a supply drive for new school teachers, the volunteers of the Linn County Sheriff’s Lebanon Sub-station chose local rookie teachers Annie Kloos and Sarah Donohue to each receive $500 worth of supplies for their classrooms.

“There are so many organizations that do supply drives for the students, but nobody thinks about the teachers,” said Sue Weinbrecht, coordinator of the project.

Kloos and Donohue, at Hamilton Creek Elementary, started their first year of teaching this month and were faced with what every new teacher has to come to terms with: decorating and setting up their classrooms with their own supplies.

HAMILTON ELEMENTARY TEACHER Sarah Donohue peers inside a bag of teacher supplies donated by the volunteers of the Linn County Sheriff’s sub-station in Lebanon.

“This was a very nice surprise,” said Donohue, who teaches second and third grade. “I knew I was going to need supplies. It’s very overwhelming to be thrown in and not have that much.”

The women each received 15 bags filled with items including common office and desk supplies, USB drives, notebooks, glue, crayons, hand sanitizer, and bulletin board supplies, which have to be decorated multiple times a year.

Bulletin wall paper costs about $10 a roll, and they have to be changed with every season and theme, so it can add up, said Kloos, who teaches first grade.

“It’s fun, though, to decorate and watch the kids come in the room and see something’s changed,” she said. “They get so excited because they’re in the space for so long every day that they like a change.”

Weinbrecht came up with the idea for the supply drive when a friend told her it cost about

ANNIE KLOOS talks with volunteer Jim Jones about the supplies she needed to buy as her first year as a teacher at Hamilton Creek Elementary.

$1,000 to get started as a first-year teacher. She includes for the teachers a “survival kit” with energy drinks, encouraging quotes and a tool box.

The volunteers of the Sheriff’s sub-station – Weinbrecht, Shirley Van Epps, Dee Gaylord, Jan and Jim Jones, Mac McNulty, David Poto and Carl Weinbrecht – donate toward the project throughout the year, and receive discounts from Office Max and Staples.