Farmers Branch students receive free school supplies to kick off new school year

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — School may have started at Farmers Branch Elementary School last week, but students were given the tools they needed to ensure a successful school year as the second week of the academic calendar got under way.

On Monday, the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the TEXAS YES Project stopped by the North Texas elementary school to donate to students in need of a “box of dreams” that included such school supplies as colored pencils, crayons, notebook paper, notebooks, erasers, glue sticks, folders, rulers, pencils, pens and tissues.

Over the course of the last seven years, the TEXAS YES Project has donated supplies to more than 500,000 students across the state. This year alone, it provided supplies to more than 78,000 students.

The idea behind these donations, explained TEXAS YES Executive Director Danielle Gunter, is to provide students “a hand up, not a handout,” and to let them know they have community support behind them as they enter a new academic year.

“We want these kids in the communities we serve to know that somebody else cares about them, that somebody is encouraging them to continue that educational journey,” Gunter said on on Monday. “Studies have shown that if you get them at an early enough age, which is elementary school, and you get them excited to come to school and they see people that are rooting for them — besides just their teachers, but other members in the community — then they get excited, and they’re more prepared, and they want to succeed. They want to make their community proud. So, for us, it’s the importance of knowing that they understand we’re behind them and rooting for them to be successful. And we want to give them the tools to be successful.”

Prominent statewide personal injury attorney Thomas J. Henry, who supports the TEXAS YES Project mission and was at Farmers Branch Elementary School on Monday to help hand out supplies to students, said he hoped his presence at the event would help inspire others to contribute to the education of Texas children as well.

“One of the reasons it’s important for me to be here is that I wanted to let other people know — ones that have the resources, whether it’s a little bit of resources or a lot of resources or business — I wanted them to know there’s a giant need for kids to receive school supplies,” Henry said. “We can all have a positive effect on children learning — not only their educational development, but their emotional development. But without resources, without those tools, kids can be hampered and not develop the way they deserve to develop. Just because children may have a problem with resources, it’s not their fault; I’m here personally because I want to make sure other people see we can all have an effect on helping children both educationally and emotionally.”

For Farmers Branch Elementary School Principal Shanah Brown, that support was easy to see on Monday.

“It’s super exciting,” Brown said. “The kids are so thrilled to have community support. It’s amazing. That the community is out there to really back us — our teachers and our kids — is super exciting. We feel valued for what we do here every day, which is hopefully change lives. We need community support. Schools want to partner with communities to be able to change kids’ lives and change that trajectory so that they can be successful citizens. So, the more support that we can get from the community, the better off we’re going to be.”