MS CHEAP

LP Pencil Box offers free shopping for teachers

Good place to donate school supplies

Mary Hance
USA Today Network — Tennessee
Kerry Conley shows off some of the most needed items, like paper towels, wipes, hand sanitizer and index cards, at the LP Pencil Box.

So, what is this LP Pencil Box?

It is definitely a unique "store" — where Metro Nashville Public Schools teachers get to "shop" one time per semester for free school supplies and classroom resources.

The concept is marvelous: local companies, charities and individuals donate all kinds of stuff that the teachers can use, from basics such as brand-new paper, notebooks, pens, crayons, pencils, markers and backpacks, to more mundane classroom essentials like paper towels and hand sanitizer, to the LP Pencil Box.

And teachers love it:

"The LP Pencil Box helps me to get expensive materials and office supplies I need for my classroom," said Glencliff High School English teacher Brooke Denton. "I can start the semester off with the things I need and provide my students with the materials they can't afford themselves."

Carla Keeter, who teaches eighth-grade math at Wright Middle Prep School, said she luckily found out about it as a new MNPS teacher. "I felt like I had died and gone to school supply heaven. My students and I are so very thankful for all of the donations from corporations to LP Pencil Box."

Here is how it works: Any Metro Nashville school teacher can register to shop at the LP Pencil Box, where they will be allowed to take as many as 80 items, anything from crayons to Kleenex, from notebook paper and pens to backpacks and protractors and staplers.

LP Pencil Box director Kerry Conley says 1,800 of Metro's almost 6,000 teachers shopped at the store last year. And she said she has met with most Metro principals about the program this year in hopes of getting the word out so that more teachers can take advantage of this community resource.

"Most of the teachers say it is like Christmas for them," said Conley, who said the 80 items that the teachers get to take to their classrooms have an estimated $400 retail value.

To stock the store, there have been big-name donors like the Louisiana-Pacific Corp., which sponsors the store. Kroger, Publix, the Titans, Dollar General, Deloitte and others have held drives to collect donated items to add to the inventory.

In the last couple of years, there has also been an increased effort to get more local companies and organizations to collect most needed items for the store, so that teachers who come in by appointment through the semester will have plenty to choose from. And many companies are happy to get their employees involved in supporting it.

A great example is Scott Gray's Omega Learning Center in Belle Meade, which has been supporting the Pencil Foundation with reading initiatives, including a Book Club in Sylvan Park with Hume-Fogg students leading the club to earn service hours. So when Gray and his team found out about the LP Pencil Box's needs, they expanded their participation and started collecting items for  teachers to share with their classes.

"We only hire certified teachers in our center and many of them are MNPS teachers. We know that they need resources and they historically would spend their own money to help 'supply' their classes," Gray said. "We feel that part of our mission is to give back to our community and this is an ideal way to help support our schools and provide much needed resources for the students."

Another example is the Ascend Amphitheater and Riverfront Park Community Open House Sunday, where guests have been asked to bring school supplies to donate to LP Pencil Box.

In the beginning, LP Pencil Box, in addition to back-to-school basics like paper and crayons, also accepted gently used art and craft supplies and really anything that teachers could use to teach or reward their students. But Conley said the focus now is much more on true classroom supplies.

But that is not to say that the teachers don't want that other stuff for their classrooms. So nowadays, LP Pencil Box partners with SMART (the reuse craft and art store in Berry Hill that benefits Progress Inc.) and Turnip Green (the reuse craft and art store on 4th Avenue South that gives away donated art and craft supplies in exchange for donations) for the art and craft type items.

So if you want to go out and buy some school supplies while they are on sale at these rock bottom back- to-school prices to donate to the LP Pencil Box, just email Kerry at kconley@pencilfd.org, or call  615-974-0438.

The store is at 1300 56th Ave. N. in the McCann ALC school in West Nashville.

And if you have gently used items like maps, holiday decorations, wallpaper books, tennis balls, yarn and fabric, white boards, paint, etc., SMART (www.smartsupplies.org) and Turnip Green (http://turnipgreencreativereuse.org) will be happy to accept them and then make them available to teachers.

Either way, contributing items really is a wonderful way to help our cost-challenged schools and our hard-working teachers.

Stay cheap!

***If you want to donate "new items," this is a good time to do it, with all of these back-to-school promotions. This week, I saw 50 cent composition books, $1 Pentel packs and 59 cent Crayon packs. And in the next week or two and on tax holiday weekend, almost every store will be having back-to-school sales where you can get a lot of school supplies for your money.

LP Pencil Box also needs volunteers to sort and stock, and you can sign up through Hands on Nashville at www.hon.org.

Stay cheap!

Reach Ms. Cheap at 615-259-8282 or mscheap@tennessean.com. Check her out at facebook.com/mscheap; @Ms_Cheap on Twitter; and on her blog at Tennessean.com/mscheap. Catch her every Thursday at 11 a.m. on NewsChannel5's "Talk of the Town."

Julie Franklin, right, donated a guitar to the LP Pencil Box in hopes that it could be passed on to a student who would enjoy it. Pencil Box director Kerry Conley said good musical instruments can always find a good home through her organization.

LP PENCIL BOX 10 MOST-NEEDED ITEMS

  1. Copy paper
  2. Index cards
  3. Paper towels
  4. Hand sanitizer
  5. Sanitizing wipes
  6. Tissues (boxes)
  7. Highlighters
  8. Composition notebooks
  9. Tape
  10. Sharpies 

GENTLY USED ITEMS ACCEPTED

  • Musical instruments that work
  • Children's books
  • Staplers
  • Hole punches
  • Office trays
  • Tape dispensers
  • Classroom posters
  • Clip boards