What’s Right With Our Schools – Students at East Lake Elementary Celebrated Christmas Early
Chattanooga, TN (WDEF) – Christmas came a little early this year for students at East Lake Elementary. It’s a holiday tradition that makes sure every child gets plenty of presents and it’s a timely example of What’s Right With our Schools.
Dr. Jasmine Farrow, “Today we are having our Dear Santa initiative. Every year for the past three years, all of our students. This year, 636.”
Dr. Jasmine Farrow, “Students make a Christmas list. And we share it with our community partners, churches, business partners, even members of central office. And they adopt a child and they give them everything they want on their Christmas list.”
Cathy Darnell, “About a year ago, we decided we wanted to be more involved in our local community. We’ve been in other organizations, but we wanted to be right here at our hometown and right here in our community. So we picked East Lake Elementary and chose to become a partner with them. And it has been a year long endeavor. We do it more than just Christmas. We have a great time, months after months, doing an initiative every month, and we want to support our community.”
Dr. Jasmine Farrow, “We have so many partners. Calvary Chapel is one of our biggest partners. They provide facilities for us to do professional development. They help us out with Teacher Appreciation Week, and they are one of our biggest donors for our Dear Santa initiative. Yesterday they showed up with a trailer full of presents. They had about 15 people, and it took them 4 hours to unpack.”
Mary Ellen Sokohl, “He got a Razor scooter, uh huh. But when he opened the box of shoes, right. He was… upside down, joyful, happy… yeah. Razor scooter, you know. The shoes are what did it for him. Uh huh.”
Dr. Jasmine Farrow, “We are really connecting to our school motto, community, caring and growth. And so with our partners, it’s really helping us to focus on the community aspect. So one of our big initiatives over the past three years is just opening back up the school building. From COVID we couldn’t have people here. And now we are welcoming our community partners who go above and beyond every day to make sure that our teachers and our students have everything that they want and need.”
Dr. Jasmine Farrow, “And I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you. Most of our community partners, they don’t want anything in return. They come smiling and they just love to be in our presence and we love to be in there. So the least I can do is just give a huge shout out again to some of our biggest partners, which are Calvary Chapel and Lee Smith, Inc. Today, Anne Republic service was also here and provided a lot of presents for our students as well.”
