Program Helping Pawhuska Students Get School Supplies Continues To Grow

It can get expensive to send the kids back to school. That’s why one small town is helping to make sure hundreds of students have what they need when they go back to class.

The school supply tables at the Pawhuska First United Methodist are almost empty, and that's a good thing because they have given away almost 500 school supply bags for students in the community.

Volunteers are packing up what's left of the school supplies - bags of pencils, papers, even Play-Doh, all items that are blessings to children from pre-k to 12th grade.

“It makes me feel really good because we had a lady come today and when she got the school supplies for free she said, ‘now we can go clothes shopping now,’” said retired Pawhuska teacher, Linda Boone.

Boone helped come up with the idea 12 years ago, after some of the heartbreaking things she saw in the classroom.

“There's nothing worse than seeing a kid that doesn't have what the other kids have when they come to school,” she said.

The volunteers used Pawhuska's school supply list to make sure they had almost every item for every grade.

The project has from grown giving away 100 free bags the first year, to 500 this year.

Boone said, “I just think Pawhuska's awesome.”

Her hope is the program will only continue to expand in the years to come.

With the help of folks in the community, others churches and civic groups in Pawhuska, the church raised more than $5,000 for the school supplies.