Lipscomb donates more than 200 desks to struggling school systems in East Tennessee
Janel Shoun |
Lipscomb facilities employees, students and staff chipped in to load up 100 of the desks Thursday morning and officials will be back on Friday to pick up the rest. The desks are journeying to East Tennessee, where Appalachia Habitat for Humanity has arranged to donate them to the Scott and Morgan county school systems.
“Our community has many needs. We focus on housing, but when opportunities present themselves to let us lend a hand to other organizations, we are always willing,” said Sandy Spurling, executive director of Appalachia Habitat for Humanity. “It will save our counties’ tax dollars and, hopefully, by saving those tax dollars, the value will come back to our residents in improved quality of life.”
The student desks have been used in Lipscomb’s science building for many years, said Jon Lowrance, chair of Lipscomb’s biology department who arranged the donation. Thanks to the renovation of the Burton Bible Building to become home to Lipscomb’s new College of Pharmacy, the science building received newer desks from Burton last week, he said.
Lowrance has a long-standing relationship with Appalachia Habitat for Humanity as he has escorted groups of Lipscomb students to build homes in Robbins, Tenn., for 10 years. So he contacted them to ask if they had a way to use the desks, as they were in fine shape, he said.
The Habitat chapter found out that the local county school systems are always in need of equipment and would be happy to have the desks. In fact, the Morgan County School System has a distribution center set up to store office furniture and equipment until a needy school can come pick them up. The distribution center is operated through an AmeriCorps grant. The donated items never sit around for long, said Kathy Carroll, grant writer and director for the Morgan County School System, and chairwoman of Appalachia Habitat.
“As a school system in a rural area, we are always eager to get things we need donated. It allows our county to save funds and spend the money in other directions,” Carroll said. It is often difficult for the school system to pay for a small order of 50 to 100 desks to have on hand for new students who enter school, she said. The 203 desks from Lipscomb will help both school systems meet that need.
“We are always searching for ways we can benefit not only our students but our community in a Christ-like manner,” said Lowrance. “Scott and Morgan counties are an area that means a lot to our students who have traveled there to build homes, so we were excited to find this opportunity to help the residents in an additional way.”